I Survived a Japanese Game Show is an American reality show that saw its first-season premiere on ABC on June 24, 2008. The show followed a group of Americans, who leave the United States for Japan where they competed in a Japanese style game show. The winner takes home US$250,000 (JP ¥25 million). The series won both the Best Reality prize and the overall prize at the 2009 Rose d'Or ceremony.
On October 9, 2008, it was renewed for a second season. On March 5, 2010, it was announced that ABC had not renewed the show for a third season.
Format
In Season One, the contestants are informed that they are to take part in a reality-style competition, but not informed of the nature of the show. They are flown to Tokyo, Japan, and taken to the Toho Studios, where it is revealed that they are to compete on a Japanese game show called . For Season Two, Majide host Rome Kanda surprised each of the contestants in their hometowns informing them they were going to Japan.
Teams are assigned into one of two teams and competed in Challenges against each other; the winning team was given a reward activity while the losing team was given a punishment activity after their team game. The losing team in each team challenge had to nominate two members to compete in an elimination challenge head-to-head (if the team could not reach a decision, the winning team decides the members instead; however, if the team had only two members remaining, they will be competing by default). The two members compete and the losing contestant is eliminated from the show, which would be carried offstage and sent back to the United States by the "sayonara mob" (脱落者决定), dressed in black suits.
In the second season, episodes prior to the finale had three games each. The winner of the first game would be awarded with an advantage for the second challenge, and two members of the team that lost the second game would compete in an elimination challenge.
In the final phase of the competition, teams are dissolved and the remaining contestants compete in challenges as individuals, with the last-placed contestant facing elimination. The final two competed in one final challenge, dubbed Super Majide!, which comprises various elements combined from past challenges for the season, and the winner of the final challenge is named the season's winner and won $250,000 (¥25 million) cash prize. The winner is also greeted by the same "sayonara mob" dressed in white suits, known as the "omedeto mob" ("congratulations mob") (優勝者決定).
The series followed not only the Majide competition, but also the contestants' activities backstage and outside the game show in reality style. The contestants lived in a house together in the suburb of Kasai, with a Mama-san (Kozue Saito), who generally expects the contestants to live in line with Japanese culture and customs. In season 2, they live in the Majide Guest House with Mama-san.
The host of season one was Japanese-American Tony Sano, who commented, "It's going to be like nothing American audiences have seen on network television." Episodes are narrated by Robert Cait.
The show was produced by A. Smith & Co. Productions (the producers of Gordon Ramsay's Hell's Kitchen and Kitchen Nightmares in the USA) with Arthur Smith, Kent Weed of A. Smith and Co. and Tim Cresenti of Small World International Format Television as executive producers and Weed directing, and is distributed by Disney/ABC's Greengrass Productions division. The format was created by Danish producers Karsten Bartholin and David Sidebotham for Babyfoot ApS, and was originally titled Big in Japan.
Majide
Majide (which is Japanese slang for "Seriously?!"), the show-within-the-show, was not an actual Japanese game show, but was intended to resemble a Japanese game show. The American producers watched hours of Japanese game shows, took the most common elements and created all of the games, with help from producers in Japan, who also produced the game segments at Toho Studios. In contrast to many American game shows, which are usually based on either trivia (such as Who Wants to Be a Millionaire or Jeopardy!), mental skill (Wheel of Fortune), celebrity interaction (Match Game or The $100,000 Pyramid), or even dumb luck (Let's Make a Deal), Japanese game shows such as Takeshi's Castle and Sasuke tend to be more physically oriented; I Survived a Japanese Game Show uses the Japanese show Majide as its source for challenges, while the reality show format used a strategy base for whom to eliminate and whom to keep, in the tradition of Big Brother and Survivor.