Unable to overcome the stupid twist of a U-turn handed out within the first half hour of the game, Amanda & Kris were eliminated in The Amazing Race 18 Episode 2.
All teams are headed on an overnight train ride to Sydney, and from there they will depart in the order in which they arrived.
First: Zev & Justin – 11:57AM
Second: Flight Time & Big Easy – 12:05PM
Third: Jet & Cord – 12:08PM
Fourth: Kisha & Jen – 12:09PM
Fifth: Margie & Luke – 12:10PM
Sixth: Mel & Mike – 12:14PM
Seventh: Kent & Vyxsin – 12:16PM
Eighth: Jaime & Cara – 12:24PM
Ninth: Gary & Mallory – 12:26PM
Tenth: Ron & Christina – 12:28PM
Teams must now fly nearly 5000 miles to Tokyo, Japan. There is a direct flight and also another flight with a 3 hour layover that gets in 15 minutes earlier. It’s only 15 minutes, so it becomes a question of how much risk they are willing to take for this relatively small reward. As the last ones to decide to go for it, Zev & Justin and the Globetrotters go to find out there’s only two seats left. The Globetrotters bow out since they owe them one, but they didn’t really like the connection anyway.
First Flight: Jaime & Cara, Kent & Vyxsin, Mel & Mike, Margie & Luke, Zev & Justin
Second Flight: Flight Time & Big Easy, Jet & Cord, Kisha & Jen, Gary & Mallory, Ron & Christina
Upon landing in Hong Kong, the teams on the first flight receive an apology for the delay due to engine problems. They do not end up landing in Tokyo until 7:20.
After getting their cars from a funky Japanese car garage, they will be headed to the city of Kamakura and the Yabusame Dojo.
Nobody knows where to go. Ron’s still as thoroughly grumpy as he was before. Seriously, why were they not eliminated last week? Meanwhile, Jaime & Cara have the trick of figuring out how to drive without bashing into anything. Not realizing that they’re in a race for last place, the lot of the last place teams decide to form a caravan, with the exception of Justin & Zev. Breaking away from the pack, Zev & Justin find themselves at the road block ahead of Jet & Cord, who are hopelessly lost. Mel & Mike eventually decide to ditch the other teams and instead work with just Margie & Luke.
The road block is to perform a yabusame ritual with the proper form and hit a target with a bow and arrow while on a wooden horse.
We see all the other teams arrive at the road block. Even the cowboys finally arrive. Jaime & Cara are nowhere to be seen. There’s a reason for that. As Cara’s warning Jaime that she is driving awfully close to the other side and needs to be careful, they run into something, hitting a guy’s mirror. They offer to give him some money, but he wants a cop involved, so they’re going to end up way behind everyone else. To their surprise, they find out there are still others at the road block.
Road block (in order of arrival): Ron, Gary, Flight Time, Jen, Justin, Kent, Mike, Luke, Cord, Cara
From there, teams must locate the kintaro statue in downtown Minami-ashigara. The detour is a choice between prayer of purity, teams take part in a shinto religious cleansing ritual, learning a prayer that is both vocal and physical, then stand under the 45 degree cascading waterfall for 1 minute. In frog of luck, teams strip down and get in a mud pit, where they will search for a buried frog while being pelted with mud by onlookers. A searching task is bad enough, but doing it while having mud thrown at you just seems to be asking for trouble. As she’s leaving, Mallory promises the locals two red heads who are going to look good in these outfits.
Frog of luck: Zev & Justin, Gary & Mallory, Kisha & Jen, Margie & Luke, Kent & Vyxsin, Mel & Mike, Jaime & Cara
Prayer of Purity: Flight Time & Big Easy, Ron & Christina
The first few teams seem to go okay, but the frog detour proves progressively more difficult as time goes by. By the time Jaime & Cara arrive, Mel & Mike are in the medic area trying to warm up. Although he says he gave up for his dad, Mike doesn’t seem to be doing so well himself.
Following the detour, Christina returns to find her fanny pack is missing. This contains all their money and passports. The Globetrotters took it, realized their mistake, but did not end up returning it to its original location. When they explain this to Phil, the Globetrotters receive a 30 minute penalty, bumping them down two spots.
The pit stop for this leg of the race is Commodore Perry’s Landing.
First: Zev & Justin (win a trip to Costa Rica)
Second: Gary & Mallory
Third: Ron & Christina
Fourth: Kisha & Jen
Fifth: Flight Time & Big Easy
Sixth: Jet & Cord
Seventh: Kent & Vyxsin
Eighth: Margie & Luke
Ninth: Jaime & Cara
Eliminated: Mel & Mike
With Jaime & Cara getting the luckiest break they can hope for, Mel & Mike have been eliminated. This elimination was only a matter of time, as Mel & Mike have been struggling from the beginning.
Stay tuned to dingoRUE for another live recap of The Amazing Race 18 Episode 4, which airs Sunday at 8/7c on CBS.