TOKYO (Reuters) - For those seeking a glow to their Christmas this
year, a jewelry store in downtown Tokyo has just the answer: a pure gold
revolving "tree" covered in Disney characters such as Mickey Mouse,
Tinker Bell and Cinderella.
The tree-like ornament is made of 40
kg (88 pounds) of pure gold, standing about 2.4 meters (7.9 ft) high and
1.2 meters in diameter. It is decorated with pure gold plate silhouette
cutouts of 50 popular Disney characters and draped with ribbons made of
gold leaf.
The price tag? A mere 350 million yen ($4.2 million).
But
the ornament is actually a deal, said Tomoko Ishibashi, in the
marketing department of Tanaka Kikinzoku Jewelry, which runs the Ginza
Tanaka jewelry store.
"Right now gold is over 4,400 yen per gram.
We used pure gold and had an expert craftsman form each Disney character
by hand," she said of the decoration, which took 10 craftsmen two
months to complete.
The combination of gold and Disney characters had spectators mesmerized.
"It
is very vivid and the gold is very pretty," said Takashi Miura, a
36-year-old jeweler. "The characters on it are also really cute and it
really looks like a Christmas tree."
For those with less ready
cash, the store offers a scaled-down version that features 20 Disney
characters and stands 25 cm high for a mere 2 million yen ($243,000).
While nobody has yet made a down payment on the larger tree, the miniature has already found buyers, Ishibashi said.
(Reporting by Kimiteru Tsuruda, editing by Elaine Lies)