The Absolutely True History of Godzilla in Washington State, Set to Music

Come for the comedic song, stay for the unexpected geology at the end of the post.

Trebuchet shared a video that captures the very essence of the cities of the Great State of Washington, and explains what happened when a giant mutant reptile wandered through. Thankfully, the damage had been repaired by the time I came here to live. Alas, they preserved the character of those cities – which is rather unfortunate in some cases.

Oh, how I larfed…

If you come here to visit, I shall show you that everything in this video is absolutely true. Although some details may be a bit… embellished.

Now for something only tangentially related… whilst I was searching for an appropriate photo to use as an illustration for this post, I came across something entirely awesome:

Image shows a black rock formation jutting out from the shore that looks remarkably like Godzilla.
Godzilla-iwa (Godzilla Rock), photo by 名古屋太郎 (CC BY-SA 3.0)

How bloody utterly awesome is that?! And it’s all-natural!

After some investigations with Google Translate, a round of image search, and a quick trot through various blogs which all gave a tiny fragment of information, I’m able to tell you that this is one of three Godzilla Rocks in Japan (I’d link to the blog I found that on, but it might crash your browser. If you’ve gotta see, search for Godzilla Rocks and look for the Godzilla 2014 blog result). This one’s on the Noto Peninsula in Ishikawa Prefecture. None of them said what the rocks were.

Take a good close look before we go on. See if you can discern it for yourselves.

To me, that looked like some sort of volcaniclastic rock. I’d say it’s a breccia, except I swear I’m seeing rounded cobbles in there. And what do you know? I discovered that (pdf)

Generally, the southern part of the Noto peninsula is characterized by outcropping basement rocks, while the middle and the northern parts are covered with Neogene formations. These are mainly composed of hyaloclastic rocks, andesite lava, sandstone and conglomerate.

Sweetness! I just wish I could get my nose up against it and find out for sure what it is, but at least we know the general thing. I’m gonna speculate it’s probably either hyaloclastic rock, which would’ve formed when molten lava quenched suddenly in the sea, or possibly a nice conglomerate made up of eroded volcanic rocks. Alas, I can’t get an image with enough resolution to tell me if those rounded bits are actually cobbles or pillow fragments and other bits that can make a good hyaloclastite look lumpy.

Do you want to investigate further? Here’s a nice source that tells you what the various formations on the peninsula are, and a little energetic googling allowed me to determine the rock’s right off the coast of Suzu-shi. Of course, if we have anybody from Japan in the audience, it’s possible they can just flat tell us what the formation is. I’d spend the rest of the night happily looking, but I’ve got about a zillion things I’m supposed to be doing instead, so I’d better go do them. Have fun, my darlings!

{advertisement}
The Absolutely True History of Godzilla in Washington State, Set to Music
{advertisement}

8 thoughts on “The Absolutely True History of Godzilla in Washington State, Set to Music

  1. rq
    2

    Now I’m trying to figure out (as there’s no comparative scale), is it because it’s so small that it got bogged down in the mud and fossilized as it stood? :D
    And I had no idea about the godzilla aspect of west coast history, never learned about it in school – have they been keeping it quiet for a reason? ;)

Comments are closed.