Based on the artist's most commonly drawn characters from the series, I suspect this might be an aged up interpretation of one of the builders. Though, I cannot tell if this is the male or female one.
Edit: Found out through some of the artist's other work that this is meant to be an older version of the male builder!
You know the situation is really heart-breaking when even the Spicy Nun is tearing up. Now, I hope having a proper farewell with Charlie will be enough to, at least, start overcoming the departure of the little dog.
For the zoomer. This was a common method to rewind a cassette. Why would you do this instead of using the rewind button or playing an unwanted song from the opposite side? Because Walkmans use AA batteries and they are not cheap. This method saves battery when you don't have a Power DC adapter. A BIC pen or a pencil were more common at hand than manual audio cassette tape rewinders, small cranking plastic devices for the same purpose.
I was a part-time worker on a construction site when I was 20yo. Have seen all of these, have done #1, #2 and #3 myself. There is another variant that's missing: "this ladder is too short, let's duct tape two of them together!" (don't do that, seriously, this is probably the most unsafe option).
no Street View or photos I could find, but roughly WSW off the roof of the Studio Ghibli main building at KajinochΕ 1-4-25, Koganei city, Tokyo - some background landmarks annotated for orientation