Japan is a country that’s very focused on safety, and there are many mechanisms in place to keep people from getting injured. For example, when a building is constructed, it’s wrapped in a cloth covering that protects people walking below from being hurt by a falling hammer, which looks to my eye like they’ve grown the building by incubating it in a giant cocoon. Whenever there’s roadwork to be done, there’ll be several men with flashlights whose job it is to guide the cars around the construction, which probably isn’t a profession I’ve thought about much back home. Since Japan is such a safe place, I imagine it was quite a surprise when a giant crane suddenly toppled over in the middle of Tokyo yesterday afternoon, bringing a 104-ton metal boom crashing down across a busy Tokyo street. Six people were injured, including two men who were trapped in a truck that was hit squarely by the falling crane, but happily no one was killed.
Fortunately the crane didn’t claim any lives when it toppled.
