TV is the new reading

'Japanese Gameshow' is as bad as you think, but is also wacky fun

The longest day of the year has come and gone, and with the unscripted “reality” and “talent” competitions spilling out all over the dial, we can officially call it – summer is here.

One of the most imaginative of these new shows is set in Tokyo where 10 Americans discover well after the selection process that they will be participating in a Japanese game show.

It’s called “I Survived a Japanese Game Show,” and it is wacky fun. No, I’m not going to dwell on the vetting, backgrounding and visa applications that had to be involved in relocating 10 random Americans from all walks of life to a tiny house in Tokyo with a formidable “mama-san” and a suave, reassuring host Tony Sano and an outrageous Japanese version of Regis Philbin called Romu Kandu.

I also won’t dwell on the state of mind of 10 people who agreed to free up an unspecified amount of time to participate in an unscripted show about which they knew absolutely nothing until the lights went up in the brightly colored, seizure-inducing studio.

In the series premiere, the contestants were split into two teams, the Yellow Penguins and the Green Monkeys on a real game show called "Majide," which is a Japanese word meaning "Majide."

They had to play a game called “Conveyor Restaurant,” in which contestants placed a gummy concoction in a helmet-mounted dish – that’s right, I just typed the words “helmet-mounted dish” – and they had to run along a conveyor belt while a teammate slurped it up without using his hands and ate it down to the satisfaction of an eagle-eyed judge, while his “server” dropped into a vast vat of flour.

The team who ate the most – the Green Monkeys (go go Green Monkeys!) – got a formalwear limousine ride and a helicopter tour of Tokyo, and got their pictures taken at the Tokyo Tower. The Yellow Penguins had to give rickshaw rides to tourists in Old Tokyo, and then had to select two teammates to compete in an elimination round.

In the elimination round, the two contestants dressed up in fly costumes and flung themselves at a giant windshield, placing markers in numbered targets. They tied the first time through, so they had to fling themselves again – all of this to the ecstatic delight of the studio audience, by the way, who banged hand-held noisemakers throughout.

Finally, one player got the low score and a mass of tuxedo-clad Japanese men came streaming in and carried off the losing fly, who I’m guessing is at least given a change of clothes and a plane ticket home.

Seriously, this is the funniest show I’ve seen in a good long while. When I first heard about it, I had no idea that the contestants didn’t know what they’d signed on for (they didn't), or that the Japanese game show in question was real (it is).

And a group of strangers immersed in an unfamiliar setting in a foreign land by a television-savvy crew where none of them speak the language, thrust into situations twisted to best exploit the foolish unreadiness of the participants for the amusement of a roaring crowd ...

... well, that’s got to be at least as unnerving as a night in a jungle could ever be.

“I Survived a Japanese Game Show” airs at 8 p.m. Tuesdays on ABC.