Quote:Giant Godzilla Christmas Tree Spruces Up Tokyo Mall
by Steve Levenstein



Pining for those classic Japanese monster movies that had you sitting on pins and needles? Well fir not, er, fear not! The giant Godzilla Christmas Tree from the Aqua City Odaiba shopping mall in Tokyo is the original nightmare before Christmas!

What's Godzilla got to do with Christmas trees, you ask? Well, there are a few superficial resemblances. Both are wide at the bottom, narrowing upward to a point. Both are deep green in hue and have been known to erupt in unexpected pyrotechnics. One shelters folks' presents while the other compels folks to seek shelter. Close enough for me!

Close enough for the Aqua City Odaiba shopping mall's holiday decoration committee as well, one would assume, and the giant Godzilla Christmas Tree certainly made a grand impression when it mauled the mall back in the year 2000. Yes, over a decade ago... old news is so exciting! It must be, as images of the Godzilla Christmas Tree continue to sprout up online every year around this time.

Several Japanese bloggers have posted some less-well-known images of the Aqua City Odaiba shopping mall's giant Godzilla Christmas Tree, which I'm pleased to re-post here for your viewing pleasure – kudos and credits go to Hayata-san's Photo Gallery (top image), Guccya-Strange (above left) and Mayurin (above right) for snapping the big guy before he snaps them.





It's the image above that seems to be the one featured most often at sites like Neatorama, probably because it shows the giant Godzilla Christmas Tree in full-on, blazing-eyed, steam-spewing attack mode. “Ohh noo, there goes Toe-kee-oh, go go Godzilla!”, as Blue Öyster Cult might say. Sing, even.

Will the world – or at least, the Aqua City Odaiba shopping mall – ever see the likes of the giant Godzilla Christmas Tree again? Hey, why not? The original Godzilla movie premiered way back in 1954 and spawned sequels for decades though none of the films featured Big G sporting a Santa hat.