One cliché begets another

When you think of Japan what is the first thing that comes to mind? One undisputed cliché, besides the slivers of raw fish, the kinky graphic novels, the ultra kitsch fads, the giggling school girls with mobile phones, the group photo ops where index and middle fingers are forced apart like scissors, the reams of electonic gadgets, the men in white gloves, the crammed-in-like-sardines trains, the lunar-landing module sleeping arrangements and the fanatic work ethic, is Mt. Fuji. What is a cliché? The mind's embroidering on the image of something we have never seen first hand. Whether the cliché exists at all or whether the fantasy we project is in any way close to the reality is not something I'm concerned with here. The Mt. Fuji of my mind was very real and very clear, and if I grew too old and wrinkled to fantasize anymore, she was the place I wanted to curl up and die in. She was quasi-perfection, reified beyond the realm of the living world, her long white hair floating with the clouds, her tender curves cushioning the landscape for miles around - she was a sacred summit that only the gods and the most worthy of earth dwellers could attend. But I saw blasphemy through representation one day: my beloved Fuji, sullied on the side of a derelict warehouse, morose like an outcast-being without reason to live. Tears and mascara dripped from a pale visage, listless and weak. Alas...Fuji was no longer the goddess she once used to be. So I moved on, I was forced to, no matter how hardious the rift may have been...now I have a new dream: to walk in among the sycamore trees that line the plains of Israel.