Trophy Or Towel: Dawn of a New Era

Air Date: 04/19/2006

Contestants: Yoshiyuki Kazuko (吉行和子), Aoki Sayaka (青木さやか), Yingling (インリン), Asaji Youko (浅茅陽子), Natsuki Youko (夏樹陽子), Macha Macha (まちゃまちゃ)

Guest Judges: Satomi Koutarou (里美浩太朗), Inohara Yoshihiko (井ノ原快彦), Hamaguchi Masaru(濱口優)

Theme Ingredient/Recipes:
Unagi (Eel) / Eel Tempura and Chirashi Sushi

Recap:

The focus of this episode was having both Satomi Koutarou as a celebrity judge and Yoshiyuki Kazuko. I'm not familiar with either, but Koutarou's big appeal is that he was one of the actors who portrayed 'Mito Komon' in the long-running drama series of the same name. Most fans of J-Drama and anime may be familiar with the story, about a wandering feudal lord who used to go around Japan fighting evil. He would usually be undercover until the climactic moment when he would reveal his true identity by flashing an imperial seal.

The cooking segment was again relatively short, I think the only reason it went as long as it did was that they needed to focus on the Yoshiyuki's struggle with her live eel. She did not want to kill it, so she asked for assistance from one of the judges. Koutarou happily obliged and helped her out.

When it came to Tasting Time, Natsuki was up first. Her tempura dish was okay, although it was more like fried eel versus an actual tempura. What really impressed the judges was the way that her sushi dish looked... until they tasted it. The presentation was fantastic, but it didn't taste that good.

Macha Macha was next up, and also missed the entire concept of tempura. Both her tempura and sushi was extremely plain looking (very white). Not only did the tempura have no taste, but it turns out that it was half-raw. Her very plain-looking sushi actually tasted pretty good. Which led to comparisons about how how her dish was the exact opposite of Natsuki's.

There were a lot of expectations placed on Aoki, considering her focus over the past few months. Questions were immediately raised about the tempura which was heavily fried. Her Top-Epu ranking was in question. This also led to a semi-heated exchange between her and Emi-chan. I sense a cooking battle between those two in the near future. On the other hand, she did a really good job with her sushi dish. While tasting it, there seemed to be some interesting insinuations about her feelings for Joushima. They even replayed a bit from the trip to Ishihara Studios where they somehow ended up sitting to next other on the bus.

Yingling... well what can be said about her cooking that hasn't already been said. Her tempura was terrible, she cooked the entire eel in baking powder. Her sushi was even worse, the smell alone was enough to make people almost sick. I'm kind of unclear on what she put into it, it appeared to be juice of some kind. Lots of trips to the bucket of love ensued, and there was some kidding about placing her under arrest. Hamaguchi had hidden a copy of the imperial seal that Mito Komon would use, and kept whipping it out to ward off the evil of Yingling.

Asaji pretty much did both dishes to perfection. Compliments were flying during the tasting. Which left Yoshiyuki as the last one to be judged. She was apologetic right from the start, and her tempura looked very fried much like Aoki's. That received a pass. However, the sushi was another matter. She had problems with the rice and I think she realized that it wasn't going to be very good. They reassured her that nothing could be worse than Yingling's. While it was pretty bad... they all tried to be as encouraging as possible.

Judgement time revealed a new change to the show. From this point on, the top ranked cook every show will be awarded a trophy. However, anyone who doesn't make it onto the Ranking Board, has to stay after the show and was all the dirty dishes. Aoki dropped a little, while Asaji moved quite high on the board. Yingling ended up on the guard booth outside the building, and Yoshiyuki also found herself just outside the studio.

Ranking ( out of 108 ):
Asaji Youko: 14 (new entry)
Aoki Sayaka: 22 -> 29
Natsuki Youko: ?? -> 48
Macha Macha: ?? -> 53
Yoshiyuki Kazuko: 93 (new entry)
Yingling: 96 -> 103