Previously on America's Top Model: the girls went to Tokyo, where they were forced to do a soup commercial in Japanese. Ann did surprisingly well, and Eva did surprisingly poorly. She lashed out after her performance, wishing ill on others (Norelle), pissing off some people (Ann). Nicole was sent home. Wait, I can't believe they didn't even mention the umeboshi! Which, by the way, I think I am addicted to.
Tokyo! It's New York to the tenth power! But right now, it's quiet. The girls sleep in the capsule hotel. Amanda dries her skanky hair in the communal bathroom. She says that the Fontaine Akasaka capsule hotel is very low-rent. And if anyone would know about low-rent, it is, indeed, Amanda. Koko, the girls' Japanese guide, wakes the girls up with some Tyra Mail. And how awesome would it have been if it were Koko the gorilla? Except then the Tyra Mail would have been turned into a tool for collecting grubs and hailed as a significant anthropological discovery. And Koko would have to try to communicate with the girls via sign language, and Ann would get very offended when Koko asked for a banana. And then Koko and Norelle would both have to sit at a typewriter indefinitely to see who could produce Hamlet first. And then Koko, having won that task by a wide margin (and thrown in the sonnets, to boot), would decide that she much prefers the company of kittens to these idiots and leave them to their own devices, which is probably why someone gets lost on the streets of Tokyo week. ["Koko. That chimp's all right." -- Wing Chun]
Amanda is apparently the early riser of the group, since all of the other girls are super-sleepy. Yaya reads the Tyra Mail, which says, "Hope you enjoyed your cozy beds, but now it's time to stretch your legs. Pack your bags and get ready to go, at 11:00 a new home you'll know." Eva says "thank goodness" for this bit of news, because the girls expected something a bit more posh than the capsule hotel in Tokyo. Eva affectionately rubs a sleeping Ann's hair, and maybe is holding her hand a little, too. Norelle (who looks like she sleeps in the nude) bumps her head on the top of her capsule.
Yaya -- who does not look like a prize when she wakes up, let me tell you -- gathers her belongings from her locker. She interviews that, during panel, the other girls' critique had to do with performance, and hers had to do with character. That's because you're an asshole, you jerk. We get a flashback of Tyra advising Yaya to eat herself some humble pie. Yaya says, "I know who I am and I know what kind of reputation I have, but I didn't show that to you here. So I'm going to take that and I'm going to swallow it, thank you." You know, the other day I was in my car flipping through the radio, and I happened to come across the travesty that is Billy Gilman singing "Sleigh Ride," and I had this immediate visceral reaction of just wanting to fly through the airwaves, grab him by the neck, rip out his vocal chords with my bare hands and then strangle him with them. And then it occurred to me that Yaya makes me have the exact same reaction. I'm just saying.
Norelle says that she's surprised to have made it to the top five. "Holy crap," Norelle says, and I think that's kind of become her catchphrase. It has none of the subtlety of "What you talkin' bout, Willis?" but does have kind of a nice ring to it. Eva says that girls keep getting picked off, and that she's going to give all of her effort and energy during the competition. Ann says that she's surprised at the way her relationship with Eva has changed. It went very fast, because the two immediately clicked. Here we have flashbacks of the two during semifinals toasting to their ultimate fate as the final two, and of Ann freaking out and telling Eva that she'll be in her wedding (as the groom). See, it's the trajectory of the typical lesbian relationship. You meet at an Indigo Girls concert, fighting for the last Amstel Light at the bar. Something clicks, and the day the U-Haul is packed and you're sharing a one-bedroom with five cats between you. Then David Crosby gives you his sperm, and all seems well until one of you realizes that she's not really gay, or sleeps with her soft butch security-guard ex, or wanders the Hollywood Hills high on ecstasy. That's about where Ann and Eva are right now.
Ann says that, contrary to what some people might think, she is not in Eva's shadow. She also says that her opinion of Eva has changed drastically. Here we see Eva freaking out after the soup commercial and hoping that Norelle bites it. Ann adds, "It's really annoying when you know she's gonna take a good picture, you know she's gonna do well, and I have absolutely terrible pictures." And that, I must say, sounds like a bit of jealousy.
In the van to their assignment, Eva makes small talk with Koko while the other girls sport looks of utter tedium. Ann has her arm all kinds of around Norelle. Amanda interviews that a lot of people in the house don't want to be around Eva, and that, given the rules of mob mentality and human nature and competition, the house has to have a target. Ann says that now she sees how Eva fakes being nice, and she knows that people don't buy into it. Ann seriously needs to chill the fuck out.
The girls enter their new Japanese home, which is awesome. Eva says that the quiet and serene atmosphere calls for a calmer personality, and that she's been more relaxed and quiet in this environment. The girls must share two rooms, so Pink Positive stays together while Amanda and Yaya take the other room. Amanda and Yaya give each other a big hug, and Yaya says that the two of them emulate Japanese style. Kumeo Koike, their homestay owner, gives them tea and a Japanese sweet made of beans. Norelle says that she doesn't understand Japanese food, and that if she ever eats Japanese food, it's Panda Express. Which, kind of not the same thing. Mr. Koike tells the girls that they have to go to their first lesson in Tokyo, and Ann repeats, "'Resson'?" And I cracked up at this, because I am evil. He tells them not to be rate. The girls and Mr. Koike do a mutual bow, and Yaya says something in Japanese.
“ Yoko Ono would have given this lesson with a series of high- pitched 'EEEEEEEEE!'s, and then doused their naked bodies in honeyed tea, demanded that they be absolutely still, and filmed them for six hours while delighting in the flies that feasted on them. ”
The girls enter a tea house, where they meet their instructor, Yoko Takahasi. And how awesome would it have been if it were Yoko Ono? She would have given the lesson with a series of high-pitched "EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!"s, and then doused their naked bodies in honeyed tea, demanded that they be absolutely still, and filmed them for six hours while delighting in the flies that feasted on them. And believe me, six hours of fly-covered naked models would have seemed like warp-speed excitement compared to the forthcoming segment on the tea ceremony.
Amanda says that a top model must be respectful of the culture she is in, that the tea ceremony has been in existence for thousands of years, and that it doesn't get any better than that. I think it's only been around for so many years because it takes so freaking long to do. It's like an ancient sage wrote, "500 tea ceremonies will bring true enlightenment to the earth," but after 3,000 years they're only on number 25. Imagine how cold that tea must get. Maybe that's how iced tea was invented. Norelle says that Japan, and Japanese anything, is like space. She means like outer space, not the space between her ears. Yoko teaches the girls how to enter the tea room, and Norelle accurately observes, "Opening a sliding door in Japan seriously takes five minutes." There are all kinds of rules about eating the sweets, and what order you go in, and what you do with your utensils afterward (and it looks like you put them in your kimono -- I knew that there had to be something hidden in those big-ass sleeves!). It is very rude just to bite the sweets, apparently. And it is this point which perhaps caused the initial rift between Ann and Eva.
Amanda says that she has a sense of otherworldliness and calm about her (chalk it up to the crystals, my friends), but that the other girls aren't so much absorbing the Japanese culture. While Yoko describes what to do with the tea bowl, I paint an exact reproduction of the Mona Lisa, re-learn calculus, and take a short nap. Snooooore. Can't they, like, use the powers of CGI to add the Dormouse to the gathering?
And then, fucking Yaya. She says that Norelle seems to have an aversion to anything foreign. She adds, "I travel the world and people tell me all the time how respectful I am, and how humble a person I am." Is she being sarcastic? First of all, who starts any sentence with, "I travel the world"? It's okay if you're, like, Ernest Hemingway or Jane Goodall or, perhaps, the rebel billionaire, but that's about it. And I am so sure that people (other than her obviously delusional family) tell her all the time how great she is. She can barely even walk down the street, what with all strangers remarking on her remarkable humility! ["Yeah, I would think that an Ivy League graduate would be able to appreciate the irony of someone bragging about how humble she is." -- Wing Chun] Meanwhile, I'm willing to bet that Yaya gets quite a different earful from passersby these days. Also? Umeboshi.