"I Survived a Japanese Game Show" - television show review (and more shows to come)

Since I've rather enjoyed watching youtube videos of wacky Japanese game shows, I knew that I had to give "I Survived a Japanese Game Show" a try. I didn't realize that it was going to be a reality show competition - I just thought they were going to do wacky things.

The show started by introducing the 10 unsuspecting Americans who would be unwittingly dumped on Japanese soil. They were then taken to their accommodations, and you got a few minutes of them being the stereotypical "stupid Americans", freaking out about the "foreign" food and drinks and funky toilets. I know that some of the contestants were from small cities in mid-America, but I guess with my experiences living in Los Angeles, I sometimes find it hard to believe that some people really have such sheltered lives.

They took the group on a supposed tour, and I was excited when they stopped at Toho Studios. How very cool! However, I'm not sure how I feel that what was about to happen was going to happen in that particular place. Unbeknownst to the group, they were actually going to be contestants on a Japanese game show, and the winner would win $250,000. The audience was rather rowdy, and they had all kinds of noise makers.

The group was divided into two teams of 5 - the Green Monkeys and the Yellow Penguins.

The first competition consisted of one team member being designated as the "eater". The goal was for the eater to completely eat and swallow as many mochi balls as they could in the time allotted. The other four team members had helmets that would hold a mochi ball on top, and the team members had to run a treadmill to where the eater was, who would have to grab the mochi ball using only their mouth, without using their hands, almost like bobbing for apples, while the team member had to run in place on the treadmill, and each team member had their chance in turn on the treadmill. The Green Monkeys went first, and their eater managed to fully consume 10 mochi balls. The Yellow Penguins got off to a quick start, and since their eater was much faster, things looked good for them. However, many of the team members had trouble with the treadmill, either falling immediately upon stepping on it, or having so much trouble keeping their balance on it that they would drop their mochi ball. They finally got the hang of it and were catching up, and as time was expiring, their eater was on his 10th mochi ball - but he wasn't able to fully eat it before time expired, so it didn't count, so the Yellow Penguins lost to the Green Monkeys by a score of 10 to 9. The Yellow Penguins would definitely have won the contest if not for all the times that the team members fell down on the treadmill or dropped their mochi ball, wasting valuable time.

The winning Green Monkeys were taken on a tour (by limo and helicopter) of Tokyo. The losing Yellow Penguins were giving a punishment of having to work at a rickshaw service for a couple of hours. At the end of their task, they went back to Toho Studios and had to pick two of their team to participate in the elimination round, where the loser would be going home. One choice (Darcy) was fairly evident as she had fallen down each time she got on the treadmill. The second choice came down to Bilenda and Cathy (who was perennially late to everything). Ultimately, the team decided that Bilenda would be the second competitor.

For the elimination game, both women were dressed as flies, and their competition was to use a trampoline to propel them onto a "windshield" (this reminded me a lot of David Letterman and his velcro suit) where they would leave their marker, and placement of the marker earned a set number of points. The person with the most points at the end of three rounds won. Darcy led most of the way, and she came close to winning, but her final jump wasn't quite good enough, so the two ended up in a tie at the end of three rounds. In the tie-breaker round, Bilenda managed to get one more point than Darcy, so Darcy was the one sent home.

One of the things I had thought about when I'd first heard about this show was how outrageous they were going to get. Some of those Japanese game shows can be downright dangerous and injury-inducing. I am so wondering what kind of waiver the contestants had to sign, especially since they didn't even know they'd be on a Japanese game show.

I actually liked the game show/competition aspects of the show, and I did find myself being interested in the outcome and craziness and even laughed out loud once. The audience and host and other machinations of the show itself are a bit over-the-top (especially the Japanese men dressed in suits who come to celebrate the winner's victory and who carry out the loser at the end) and not nearly as funny to me as others might find it. However, I'm finding it interesting enough to keep watching for now, especially since there's a dearth of other things to watch in the summer.


In related news, there are apparently going to be more Japanese TV shows showing up on American screens. I'm looking forward to seeing the human tetris show, but I think that's about it.