(Image from ken-blo)

Natsuko “Gal” Sone was not the only entrant in Sunday’s “Gluttonous Queen” contest with dyed blonde hair. Aki Ikeda, who has the nickame Gal Ikeda (ギャル æ± ç”° 亜紀) also sported non-natural hair coloring (she also has the nickname girayunee (ギャルネエ) ). Ikeda finished 5th overall and reportedly is missing a front tooth, which might facilitate bone stripping in a chicken wing eating contest.

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TVRaiting.blog77.fc2.com reports that yesterday’s showing of “Gluttonous Queen II” received a 14.2% audience share. This compares favorably to the audience shares received by the current NCAA college basketball tournament (10% – 16% according to zap2it.com

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herpdaddy watched last night’s “Gluttonous Queen II” contest and wrote a blog entry in English about it (he also has some funny Japanese T shirts with English on them in his post.) He reports about the final noodle contest:

So she made it to the final round with 2 other women both equally thin and the final round was ramen noodles. Mmmm. I mean, it’s GOOD but how much can you really eat? Apparently an incredible amount. Each serving was a standard sized serving but they got a break. So they don’t burn themselves, they did not have to drink the soup. But they did have to eat all of the noodles and the major toppings including a thin slice of Chinese roast pork.

I have to admit, I was glued to the TV. I mean, it’s just 3 girls pigging out but it was just amazing how much they were able to put away.

In the end, Gal Sone won for the 2nd year in a row with 16 bowls of ramen in 1 hour. Eeeeeeeeesh…

Tomoko Miyake came in second (possibly tying with another woman) with 14 bowls. I believe that Suguwara was removed by medical personel (like “The Artist” was in last fall’s gluttonous king contest), but I am not sure about that. Hopefully R Suzuki will have a full writeup.

“Gluttonous Queen” produced a conflict over television watching in one household last night: (automatically translated by Google)

… Because with the father tried to change the channel into the gluttonous queen championship of TV Tokyo Channel 12, Ltd.,
Me “just a little! Just a little just a little!! Unless Michael [huerupusu] (Phelps) you see, []!!!”

So is. The gold medal 7 crown it is instantaneous!!!
It is enormous the ~~~!!! It is enormous as the same human the ~~~!!!
You were impressed. . .

Gluttonous queen* However also the gal 曽 root is enormous, – (. _.)

update laana.jp has full results (in Japanese)

1, (“ギャル” 曽根菜津子) Natsuko “Gal” Sone
2. (三宅智子) Tomoko Miyake
3. (正司優子) Yuuko Siyouzi
4, (嘉数千恵) “Nurse”
5. (池田亜紀) Aki Ikeda
6. (仲山沙織) Saori
7. (菅原初代) Suguwara (disqualified by doctor after winning Round 1)
8. (山下尚穂) Yamashita

update #2 R Suzuki has uploaded her recaps: Part 1 , Part 2

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A Japanese blogger is currently on vacation in Hawaii, and s/he saw a television crew recording Natsuko “Gal” Sone competing in the “Gluttonous Queen” contest on Waikiki Beach. The contest will be televised later this month or in April. It is too bad that apparently no American women were invited to compete.

Exactly recording the gluttonous king decisive game being done at the Waikiki beach, it increased.

The gal 曽 root it was.

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R Suzuki reports that Sugawara won the Iwate noodles contest on Sunday by eating 225 small cups of noodles on 5 minutes. Sugawara won the regional qualifying tournament for this spring’s “Gluttous Queen” contest. A news video of the contest can be viewed at http://news.tvi.jp/wvx/16226/video.wvx Each entrant has a personal noodle refiller who is busy throughout the contest. Yama3 wrote a blog entry about his 6th place finish. He received an award for best technique.

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R Suzuki has a report on the first and second round qualifiers for the 2007 “Gluttonous Queen” contest. Contests were held in Hokkaido, Fukuoka, Shikoku and Nagoya. The winners of those events then competed for a spot in the finals. Sugawara won that contest and will appear in the finals that will be televised in the spring. Sugawara, a 43 year old from Morioko, came in second in a noodle contest in November to “The Artists” and had the best ever performance by a woman in the 21 year history of that event.

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R Suzuki reports that team eating contests were held during a New Year’s Day television special. The West team had Gal Sone and Takuya Yamamoto while the East team had Nobuyuki Shirota and Tomoko Miyake. The teams also contained some other celebrities. Men’s, women’s and mixed gender contests were held. The mixed gender contest was a 30 minute sushi contest which was won by the Galsone (154 pieces) / Yamamoto (174 pieces) team.

Tomoko Miyake reports about competing in the event in her blog.

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Metacafe has a clip of a 20 foot sushi roll eating contest between Takako Akasaka and Misao Fujita that was held in a bowling alley. A brief segment of that contest appeared in Takako Akasaka’s career highlights video which was available for a short time on youtube. The contest has narration in English, but the narrator provides nothing but insults.

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The best Halloween themed competitive eating blog is maintained by “Deresque” Matsumuto. Deresque finished second to Natsuko “Gal” Sone in a noodle eating contest this past weekend.

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Food Battle Stadiums #3 was held this weekend in Japan. Gal Sone did not eat at that event, but served as the contest MC. She was late which resulted in the entire program being delayed 30 minutes. Nobuyuki Shirota and Tomoko Miyake ate in exhibitions but did not participate in the main contest.

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A fan of male Japanese competitive eaters might feel the same way after Sunday’s “Gluttonous King” that a Seattle Seahawks fan did after the Super Bowl. In the 3rd round (barbecue shish kebabs) of “Gluttonous King,” Natsuko “Gal” Sone finished in last place, which should have resulted in elimination and a 5th place finish, but she was advanced to the 4th round anyway. She probably would have avoided a last place finish if she did not take the time to remove the meat from the skewer and eat it with chopsticks. I would appreciate if a Japanese speaker could tell me if the announcers provided a reason why “Gal” Sone was not eliminated. As far as I can tell, the official explanation appears to be that they ran out of food, but the servers seemed to have no difficulty supplying the eaters with food up until the end of the contest.

In the fourth round (salmon) two eaters were to be eliminated since no one was dropped after the previous round. At the end of that contest “Gal” Sone was neck and neck with “the Artist” and appeared to be at approximately the same level of discomfort, but the doctor removed “the Artist” from the contest, advancing Ms. Sone to the final round.

A commenter to the “Much & Fast” blog claims to be the second place finisher in the Osaka qualifier. He did not make the finals because TV Tokyo took the top four finishers from the Tokyo qualifier, enabling Tomoko Miyake to advance.

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All videos for part 2 of “Gluttonous King” are now available on youtube.

TV Tokyo got youtube to remove the videos for earlier Gluttonous King / Queen shows, so the videos will probably not be available for a long period of time if you are interested in watching them.

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The singing group Morning Musume, consisting of 13 girls, had a cake eating contest against Nobuyuki “the Giant” Shirota in their Christmas special. The totals of all 13 girls were combined and Shirota only ate for about 5 minutes of the 10 minute contest. (I hope Shirota got paid well for his appearance)

Part 1, Part 2 (videos are subtitled)

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From Much & Fast

“Gluttonous King” final:
1) Nobuyuki “the Giant” Shirota
2) Takuya Yamamoto, fails to threepeat
3) Natsuko “Gal” Sone
4) – 6) ?
7) Tomoko Miyake – ate french fries with chopsticks while everyone else uses hands, later
drops chopsticks

Shirota has an entry about his victory in his blog.

updated R Suzuki has round by round results: Part 1, Part 2

Videos of the preliminary round can be seen at: http://www.youtube.com/profile_videos?user=ec4s

Part 1 – Tokyo preliminary round
Part 2 – Osaka preliminary round
Part 3 – Shirota does a restaurant’s eating challenge cheered on by his groupies
Part 4 – Yamamoto works out in a boxing gym
Part 5 – Gal Sone meditates in a Buddhist temple
Part 6 – 1st round – french fry eating contest in Hokkaido farm

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The final round of last year’s “Gluttonous King” contest where Shirota, Yamamoto and Nishikawa competed to be champion is available on youtube: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3.

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The Asahi Shimbum has an article about the current state of Japanese competitive eating containing a preview of Sunday’s “Gluttonous King” contest. The article says an eating contest took place in 1817.

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TV Tokyo will televise the 2006 edition of “Gluttonous King” (more information) this Sunday. The contest is open to both male & female eaters. Yamamoto will attempt to defend his 2005 title and Gal Sone will look to better her 6th place finish from last year. Nobuyuki “the Giant” Shirota and Tomoko Miyake will also compete.

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(from japanprobe) A clip from Japanese TV of a Jamaican and Nigerian attempting a restaurant’s 3kg curry challenge has been posted to youtube. It is claimed they both eat 6kg, but the clip jumps to an empty plate so this cannot be verified.

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Several clips from Food Battle Club have been uploaded to youtube. The clips include a final round contest between Kobayashi and Nobuyuki Shirota which offers indisputable video evidence that Kobayashi has lost to organisms besides black bears – Part 1 Part 2 The contest involves eating 10kg (22 lb) of curry.

There is also a clip of Iteya, who Yuko became obsessed with in “Horsemen of the Esophagus” and was driven into depression by his retirement.

This article from Asahi Weekly (and copied by a spam blog) provides a history of Japanese competitive eating before 2005 and focuses on the rise and fall of Food Battle Club Part 1 Part 2.

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The first round of the 2005 “Gluttonous King” contest televised on TV Tokyo has been uploaded to youtube. Natsuko “Gal” Sone avoided elimination by eating 6 grams more of bread than Miyuki Iwata.

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Several new videos of Japanese competitive eating programs have been posted to youtube. The 2002 rookie contest, which is over an hour long, has been uploaded in its entirety. The top two finishers in that contest were women (the runner up is quite cute) who did not compete in this year’s “Gluttonous Queen” contest. There is also footage from the New Year’s Eve competitive eaters party of Kobayashi competing aganist an unknown woman in a restaurant where sushi is delivered on conveyor belts. Some brief clips of Tomoko Miyake eating sausage have also been posted.

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Another video clip of Natsuko “Gal” Sone and Nobuyuki “The Giant” Shirota’s weekly duel has been posted on youtube. The contest involves eating 5kg of udon (whatever that is) in 15 minutes.

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Jason Fagone has kindly sent me his list of Japanese eating contest results provided to him by Kenji Aoki. The results (available after the jump) come from the book “Ogui Senshuken” and were translated by Marina Kinno. The information confirms the Food Battle Club results on the Japanese website.

Read the rest of this entry »

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Blog entries about the Paw Food Battle Stadiums contest in Japan Sunday in which “Giant” Shirota, “Gal” Sone and Tomoko Miyake made guest appearances:

Toro
Shirota
yumita6

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Toro attended today’s Nathan’s Tokyo (Roppongi) qualifier, won by Kenji Oguni with 19 HDB, and wrote a blog entry about it. Oguni’s mark is the lowest winning qualifier amount so far. Miyuki Iwata placed second with 15.5 HDB.

This blog entry (in English) focuses on three martial artists who participated in the contest.

Updated 6/18 10:50 pm – Deresque debuted with 14 HDB and wrote a blog entry about his contest experience

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