A clip of a hamburger eating contest between Natsuko “Gal” Sone and Nobuyuki “the Giant” Shirota has been posted to youtube. The burgers are bunless and covered in foil.

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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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Yahoo of Japan reports that Natsuko “Gal” Sone will follow the trail blazed by Cookie Jarvis, Crazy Legs Conti and others and enter the entertainment world.

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I have written a brief article on Natsuko “Gal” Sone for Wikipedia. Someone who knows both English & Japanese could probably improve the article a considerable amount.

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The youtube video of Natsuko “Gal” Sone eating 40K calories has been viewed over 200,000 times. A lot of cable television programs do not have 200,000 viewers. (The Gluttonous Queens video, which has been available for three months, has only been viewed about 10,000 times) I am curious whether the majority of the viewers are coming from Japan or the US. Hopefully “Gal” Sone’s popularity will result in her competing with American eaters in the not too distant future.

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A clip of last Wednesday’s weekly eating contest between Natsuko “Gal” Sone and Nobuyuki “the Giant” Shirota has been uploaded to youtube. The challenge is to eat 6 kilograms of curry in under 15 minutes.

The blog of the restaurant where the challenge was held has an entry about the contest.

A youtube clip of some of Takako Akasaka’s contests is also available on youtube. She competes against a champion German eater in consuming 6 meters of frankfurters in Berlin and has another 6m sausage contest against Misao Fujita. She also participates in a wedding cake eating contest wearing a wedding dress.

This blog entry from April 2005 has an interesting comparison between Food Battle Club and TV Tokyo’s oogui programming.

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From TV in Japan A clip of Natsuko “Gal” Sone eating a huge hunk of meat and then an Everest of ice cream has been uploaded to youtube. The total amount of calories in the consumed food is listed at 40,000. The courses take place in different restaurants.

Updated 7/13 12:26 – The ice cream mountain is apparently a regular menu item that retails for 20,000 Yen.

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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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(Since some readers don’t care for posts about Japanese eaters not named Kobayashi, I will combine these links into a single post to make them easier to ignore)

Miyuki Iwata has an interview (in English) from after her victory in Shanghai.

Tomoko Miyake has a video (apparently some type of audition tape). Toro has a translation of the transcript.

Natsuko “Gal” Sone was crowned “King” after completing 5 eating challenges at gansotorokatsu curry. It took her only 2 days to complete all five challenges.

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Last Wednesday’s televised contest between Natsuko “Gal” Sone and Nobuyuki “the Giant” Shirota featured German sausage in honor of the location of the World Cup. Shirota defeated Gal-Sone 49 sausages to 42 and they both wore the jersey of the Japanese national soccer team. Additional eaters wore the uniforms of Japan’s first round opponents: Brazil, Australia and Croatia. Miku Matsumoto, who wore Croatia’s jersey and ate 10 sausages, has a blog entry about the contest.

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Here are various links I have come across in the past month or so:

Erik Denmark radio interviews: June 2, June 5
Kevin Carr’s interview with Pat Bertoletti (about 50 minutes)

Interview with David “Brickhouse” Braunstein & Matt Streett before Baltimore crabcake contest
Las Vegas Sun preview of Nathan’s qualifier (has only Ron Koch quotes I am aware of)
2005 US Open of Competitive Eating writeups: Round 1 Round 2 Round 3-5
Rocky Mountain News column
Another Natsuko “Gal” Sone fan blog

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The new poll asks what you think the difference will be between the number of hot dogs eaten by Sonya Thomas in her Nathan’s qualifier and the amount eaten by Natsuko “Gal” Sone in the Tokyo qualifier. (This assumes the Gal enters the Tokyo qualifier.)

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Video captures of Natsuko “Gal” Sone’s strawberry contest against Nobuyuki “Giant” Shirota are available after the jump. Shirota won 330 strawberries to 283. The contest has a lot of commentators for a small scale event.

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The blog for Gansotorokatsu Curry, a restaurant famous for its eating challenges, reports that Natsuko “Gal” Sone ate 8kg or 17.6 pounds of food at that establishment and still had enough room left over for ice cream. Tomoko Miyake, the 4th place finisher in the “Gluttonous Queens” contest, dined with Sone but could only eat 5kg or 11 pounds. Kenji Aoki, who arranged the sushi contest described in “Horsemen of the Esophagus”, was the third member of the party. Aoki has a very detailed website about oogui. Jason Fagone’s book states that Aoki was engaged as of early 2005. It would be interesting to learn how Aoki’s wife/fiancee viewed his dinner with Sone and Miyake.

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You Tube has a 9 minute video of the final contest of the “Gluttonous Queen” program broadcast last month at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oAm8AJ-RMfk
Natsuko “The Gal” Sone claimed the crown by eating more bowls of spicy noodles than the other two finalists: Iwata and “The Nurse.”

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The No Name Ninja has started a fan blog for “Gal” Natsuko Sone at http://galsonelovery.blog.shinobi.jp/ (in Japanese)

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The Japanese sports website Sponichi Annex has an article about Natsuko “The Gal” Sone. Some facts from that article:

• Her birthday is December 4, 1985, making her 20 years old
• Her height is 154 cm – 5’4″ and she weighs 45 kg – 99 lb.
• She lives in Himeji and works part time as a clerk in a miscellaneous goods store
• Like Sonya, her dream is to run a restaurant and she hopes to get a cook’s license to pursue that goal.

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Nobuyuki Shirota has some pictures of last Saturday’s hamburger contest in Tokyo on his blog. Shirota won the men’s contest and Natsuko “The Gal” Sone won the women’s contest. The hamburgers were from McDonald’s and “picnic style” rules were apparently in effect.

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Surprisingly, the first English article about the new princess of Japanese competitive eating has appeared in a South African publication. iol.co.za reports that Natsuko Sone (aka “The Gal”) won a gourmet Japanese seafood eating contest on the northern island of Hokkaido. The article does not mention any other contest entrant.

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A video clip of “The Gal” can be seen at http://www.ntv.co.jp/news/asx_dai2/060418037_300k.asx as part of a segment in which three females attempt eating challenges. “The Gal” appears at the two and a half minute mark and eats 8 pounds of noodles with chopsticks in 15 minutes. The other challenges are fried rice and shisk-kebabs.

In other Gal news, she did a hamburger eating contest at a slot machine hall and ate 5 Mack hamburgers (short for McDonald’s ?) in a minute, showing speed eating ability for the first time. There was a separate contest for men in which Nobuyuki Shirota (translated as white rice field) won by eating 10 hamburgers in 3 minutes.

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The surge in popularity for the winner of the Gluttonous Queen contest, nicknamed “The Gal”, can be tracked by searching for her name (ギャル曽根) in Japanese blogs using technorati. There were almost 200 mentions of “The Gal” in Japanese blogs the day after her victory was televised. She currently has 439 mentions in Japanese blogs which is quite impressive when you take into account that her competitive eating career only started last fall. In comparision, Kate Stelnick has 244 mentions in blogs, most coming in January 2005 (and there are more blogs in the US than in Japan).

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Aside from last fall’s “gluttonous monarch” contest, the only other events that “The Gal” has participated in documented on the internet is a series of television appearances from from February and March. Each Wednesday afternoon Nippon TV broadcasted an eating challenge from a different restaurant in which “The Gal” usually competed against Nobuyuki “The Giant” Shirota. Shirota won all of these contests except one, where “The Gal” outate him by 182 items to 173. “The Gal” was generally close in the challenges she lost. If “The Gal” can match the 80%-105% of Shirota’s amounts she obtained in the challenges in Nathan’s, she should be able to eat 30-40 hot dogs (Shirota ate 38 hot dogs in 2004)

The Gal’s TV challenges

Feb 1 13 ft. 11 lb. sushi roll: Shirota 42:50, The Gal 52:45
Feb 8 Yamada 13 bowls, The Gal 12 bowls in 30 minutes- ties Shirota’s previous record
Feb 15 Yamada 190 sushi pieces, The Gal 183 pieces in 30 minutes, both break Shirota’s previous record of 176
Feb 22 The Gal 182 items, Shirota 173 items – items look like hot dog buns but are not disclosed
Mar 1 Shirota 330 strawberries, The Gal 283 strawberries in 30 minutes
Mar 22 Shirota 13 beef bowls, The Gal 11 beef bowls in 30 minutes

(Google translates Shirota as white rice field)

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“The Gal” has been crowned the new queen of Japanese competitive eating.

Here are the results of the final rounds of the “Gluttonous Queen of Japan” contest televised on TV Tokyo yesterday obtained from Everyday of the R sea bass gluttony Part 1 (Google Translation) Part 2 (Google Translation) and Much & Fast (Google Translation)

Round 6->5 Sausage 30 minutes

1 35 “The Gal” (曽根奈津子)
2 25 Iwata (岩田ミユキ)
3 24 “The Nurse” (嘉数千恵)
3 24 Tomoko Mikaye (三宅智子)
5 16 Saito (斉藤千恵)
6 15 Ro (若園真由香) eliminated

“The Gal’s” total of 35 sausages matches what Sonya Thomas did in the Sheboygan Bratwurst contest, but Sonya had only 1/3 of the time.

Round 5->4 Rice 30 minutes

1 27 cups “The Gal” (曽根奈津子)
2 26 Iwata (岩田ミユキ)
3 20 Tomoko Mikaye (三宅智子)
3 20 “The Nurse” (嘉数千恵)
5 13 Saito (斉藤千恵)

At the 20 minute mark, Iwata was ahead of “The Gal” by 2 cups, but “The Gal” comes from behind to win this round.

Round 4->3 Shrimp 45 minutes

1 116 shrimp “The Gal” (曽根奈津子)
2 104 “The Nurse” (嘉数千恵)
2t 104 Iwata (岩田ミユキ)
4 90 Tomoko Mikaye (三宅智子)

Iwata and Tomoko Mikaye were neck and neck for the third place spot with Iwata finally avoiding elimination. The Nurse’s strong performance is a considerable surprise of this tournament and marks her as another Japanese female competive eater to pay attention to.

Final Round Chinese noodles 1 hour

Surprisingly there is not a 3->2 round; the winner of the three-woman contest is the overall champion. The results of this round are:

1 22 cups “The Gal” (曽根奈津子)
2 18 Iwata (岩田ミユキ)
3 15 “The Nurse” (嘉数千恵)

“The Gal” wins this round easily and basically coasts from the 45 minute mark, when she had 20 bowls. She spends some of the final 15 minutes fixing her makeup, which Iwata apparently views as taunting. During the post contest handshake, Iwata attacks “The Gal” according to this blog entry (Google translation)

The popularity of “The Gal” has held spur a resurgence in Japanese competitive eating according to this blog entry (Google translation) but it probably has a considerable distance to go to reach the level of popularity it had around the turn of the century. Another “Gluttonous Monarch of Japan” contest open to both genders will apparently be held this fall.

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I have been able to track down information about the Japanese television series about female competitive eaters I wrote about earlier this week. The show, Oogui 2006, is broadcast on TV Tokyo and the second episode will be televised Sunday night. (The program debuted on Tuesday.) The program’s home page is http://www.tv-tokyo.co.jp/oogui2006/ (Google translation) If Japanese competitive eating can command 2 hours of broadcast television in prime time Sunday night, it cannot be doing that badly.

In the contest, seven competitors are chosen from two qualifiers and then a series of contests are held which eliminate the last place finisher until only the champion remains. A similar event open to both genders was held last fall. Three qualifiers in the women’s contest also qualified for the open contest: Miyuki Iwata, Tomoko Mikaye, and Natsuko “The Gal” Sone. I am assuming that no slots in the open contest were reserved for women. Those three are the favorites for the women’s contest. Iwata is generally considered the top Japanese female competitive eater after Takako Akasaka (she lost the 2005 Tokyo Nathan’s qualifier by just one hot dog), but “The Gal” has more “upside” because she is only 19 while Iwata is 32. (I hope to write individual posts about the above three competitors later this week.)

Japanese Blog entries about the contest can be found at: Everyday of the R sea bass gluttony (Google translation) and Much & Fast (Google translation)

Click below for screen captures from the contest and additional information

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