One of the classic images from Japanese anime — immortalized in the famous post-apocalyptic "Neon Genesis Evangelion" franchise — is of a child-pilot sitting at the controls of a robot that's so huge it stands head and shoulders above the surrounding buildings. It's the key to the genre's escapist allure — the means by which even the most wimpy of adolescents can believe that they, too, can take on the world.

I would be the last to suggest that 34-year-old Kei Ozawa is in any way like a child, but seeing this "crawling jib crane" driver in his control box perched some 30 meters above a half-complete building near Tokyo's Tamachi Station — and with only the horizon stretched out before him — that is the image that springs to mind.

Hit the wrong button, if you are Ozawa, and the whole thing might start walking down toward Shinagawa. Well, not quite — although surely the potential for disaster is almost as great.