"I Survived a Japanese Game Show" - July 15, 2008 episode

Picking up at the end of last week's episode, Meaghan was happy that she won the elimination competition, but she was still mad that Donnell wanted to go back on his word about her immunity.

At the beginning of the new day, mama-san arrived and told them she was going to teach them some useful Japanese phrases, including "How much is that" and "I'm sorry", the latter of which she taught to Cathy because Cathy was late so often. This was actually a nice intercultural learning moment that didn't focus on the "stupid Americans", so I liked it.

The team competition this week had all the team members on both sides dressed up as big babies, complete with bib, diaper and bonnet. Three team members would be put inside a crib with a sort of lazy Susan in the middle that would spin them. After a certain amount of time, the spinning would stop, and the first team member had to get out (dizzy from the spinning, most likely), fill two cups of milk and then make their way through a difficult obstacle course, pouring whatever they might have left in their cups into their team baby bottle. The first person to go would have had to spin for the shortest amount of time, and the longer each team member took, the longer each subsequent team member would be spinning before attempting the obstacle course with the milk, so the third person to go could be spinning for some time before their first chance to try the course. The team with the most milk at the end of the competition was the winner.

The Yellow Baby Penguins went first, and since they had an extra member, Bilenda sat this one out. When the spinning stopped, Cathy went first, but she fell almost immediately after filling her cups, spilling all of the contents. However, even though she had no milk left, she had to finish the course, after which she ran back to the crib to hit the stop button. The next person climbed out, and she climbed in, and the spinning resumed. The next person was Andrew, who did ok, with almost half a cup in each cup. Next up was Justin, who did the best of the bunch, finishing with both cups more than half full. When Justin was coming back, Andrew asked Cathy if he could go again, which she readily agreed to, considering how awful she'd done and how worried she was for herself if her team lost. Andrew had about half a cup in each cup on his second try, but he didn't make it to the baby bottle before time expired, so that milk didn't count.

The Green Baby Monkeys were then up, and their strategy was to keep their eyes closed as they were spinning, hoping it would help ward off the dizziness. Donnell went first, but he was wobbly from the start and very soon spilled all of his milk. Meaghan made her way through and ended up with about a half cup of milk total. Mary was last to go and had been on the spinning crib the longest, but she did the best of both teams, spilling very little of her cups, and she alone had about 3/4 in each cup when she poured the milk into her team baby bottle. Donnell went up again, but again, he spilled all of his milk, and he finished his circuit and hit the stop button on the spinning crib just as time expired.

When they revealed the results, the Yellow Baby Penguins were the obvious winner, and their reward was to go to a Japanese village where the best soba noodles were made. The Green Baby Monkeys, who had just suffered their third defeat in a row, were already demoralized, but it only got worse when they were told that their punishment would be shucking clams. Because Meaghan had volunteered for the last elimination round with the stipulation that she was safe in the next one, everyone was discussing whether or not her immunity would be honored. Donnell tried to talk himself out of the elimination round by saying that he would be kicking off whomever went against him, and since Mary did so well, it wouldn't be fair for her to be kicked of, so Mary and Meaghan should go up against each other. Considering that he did the absolute worst among his teammates, I thought it was pretty bad that he tried to get out of the elimination round altogether. And considering that he had just completely sucked at a challenge, I don't know why it was assumed that he'd automatically beat whomever he might be up against when they had no idea what the competition would involve.

Andrew, Justin, Cathy and Bilenda were awakened the next morning and taken to the village where they were told soba noodles originated. A soba master made noodles right in front of them and then cooked and served the noodles to them, which they enjoyed.

Donnell, Meaghan and Mary had a much less pleasant day as they were taken to where women were already shucking clams. The first thing that hit both Meaghan and Mary was the stink of the place, and they struggled to get through it. Meaghan had a particularly hard time when she realized the clams were still alive.

As the elimination round drew closer, there was more pressure put on Mary. She was already up by the time mama-san had come to wake them for the clam shucking, trying to figure out what she was going to do. She knew that she had done the absolute best in the challenge, not just for her team but among all the contestants, and she didn't think she should be up for elimination, but she was also struggling with having given Meaghan her word about the immunity. Everyone, including members of the Yellow Penguins, was telling her what they would do and suggesting what she should do, and by the time the Green Monkeys took the stage, a decision had still not been made. When asked by the host, Mary finally chose herself and Donnell to compete in the elimination round, as she felt that keeping her word to Meaghan was more important.

For the elimination round, both Mary and Donnell were stripped to basically their underwear, and they wore chicken masks on their heads. They had to cover themselves up with oil, and then when the competition started, they each slid down into feathers and had to roll around in them until they were completely covered. They then had to break eggs (really, giant, egg-shaped balloons which when popped had something simulating egg yolk inside) only with their butts, basically sitting on ("hatching") the eggs. Mary was chosen to go first, and she started off doing really well and breaking eggs easily and quickly, but as time went on, the oil was making it slippery, so she was falling on the ground as well as slipping off the eggs rather than breaking them. She attributed her problems to the fact that her "booty" wasn't very big. She had also lost most of her feathers by this time, so that did make it even slipperier, but I'm also wondering if having the feathers didn't help her in popping the balloons as well. She ended up with a total of 10 hatched eggs. It was then Donnell's turn, and with his bulk and weight (and his bigger booty, said Mary), he had almost no difficulty breaking the eggs. He slipped and missed a few times, but he was able to break 11 eggs fairly quickly, and the game was over. In the end, Mary said she was sad to go, but she didn't regret her decision, and she took her elimination graciously.