Gal mania sweeps Japan
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).