Then Ann Jordan had to add an even tougher twist to the race. The Los Gatos High School teacher had her students participate in a mock version of the program--without speaking English.

Jordan, who teaches Japanese, took the premise for The Amazing Race and used it as a language exercise. Instead of navigating the globe, her students had to go on a photo scavenger hunt through the town of Los Gatos to find a final destination, such as a restaurant or shop, speaking only in Japanese.

"The idea for the assignment came about because there's a chapter in their book that deals with finding your way around the town," Jordan said. "It was kind of difficult to teach without there being a context, so I was watching The Amazing Race and thought that would be a fun thing to adapt it to."

In the television show, two-person teams are sent on a trek around the world for about 30 days. At each destination, couples have to compete in challenges, some mental and some physical. The ultimate goal is to win the $1 million prize.

The difference between the television show and the Los Gatos High version was that the school trek took only one day, and if students got stuck on a clue they could call their teacher on her cell phone and ask for help. The students had to find their destinations on foot, which meant zigzagging past places like the Los Gatos post office, crossing the bridge by the Forbes Mill Museum, trekking behind Borders and around Andale Taqueria. They also had to take photographs of themselves at these destinations to prove they'd been there.

Students worked in groups to read directions that had been written by other groups in the class. A trip to the Great Bear coffee shop could easily be confused with the Los Gatos Coffee Roasting Company, since the somewhat vague directions couldn't include proper business titles or street names.

"The directions were well made, but at one point there were a couple ways we could have interpreted them, and we ended up going the wrong way," said senior Daniel Hayashi. "It was interesting to test our skills and see how well we understood Japanese."

Daniel said their teacher is fun because she lets students escape from the classroom occasionally on assignments like this.

"She's pretty cool," said senior Spencer Sands. "She does some assignments that aren't in the box, and that's totally appreciated. She just keeps us on our toes."

The students said should they ever visit Japan, this journey through their town really will prove helpful.

"It was good because it was practical. If you get lost in Tokyo, you know how to get around. It was survival Japanese," said senior Andrew Rose.

To cap off the project, students created a presentation that featured a comic strip, a newspaper article written in Japanese and the photographs they took to document the adventure.

Jordan said overall she didn't want the assignment to be too easy, so she reviewed and edited the directions before they were distributed. She also required students to include some of the target vocabulary terms they were studying in the activity.

"The kids live in a perfect town because everything is within walking distance of the high school," she said. "We're lucky to have a school situated in a community that has so much accessibility, and I like to take advantage of that."

In the end, the trip was much like the television show, just without the $1 million prize.