The traditional rickshaw is one of the most impressionable images of Asia before the Second World War. You can find several black and white street scene images of a man pulling a passenger carriage with two huge wheels. These modes of transport are long gone with the rapid urbanization across Asia, but in Kyoto, there are sections of the city where you can still find these human powered rickshaws plying the streets.
Most of these rickshaws are only available in the small alley ways in the older parts of Kyoto, where cars are not able to travel through. The drivers of these rickshaws are not necessarily huge people, but you can see that they do have strong legs that could compensate for their size.
One unique thing I noticed about their outfit is the specially designed foot glove that they wear that helps them travel through any type of surface without slipping. The rickshaw is one of the last vestiges of the romantic image of Asia, and an environmentally and healthy way to travel.