Word: kobayashi
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...Maybe. But there's also the uniqueness to be found in Japan's relationship with food, and the cultural fixation on eating it or appraising it. Takeru "Tsunami" Kobayashi wasn't six-time champion of Nathan's Hot Dog eating contest without the backing of a culture that knows how to stretch their stomachs. Many celebrity "tarento" (talent) become famous by stuffing their faces, and "oogui" (or competitive eating) is so popular that TV Tokyo, a major network, has a seasonal special program to determine the "King of Gluttons." This September, "food fighter" Ayari Sato won against seven competitors through...
...Takarazuka actresses - there are about 400 in five troupes - have been leaving audiences speechless with these marvelous and at the same time overwhelming works for 95 years. Founded in the town of the same name - by Ichizo Kobayashi, a locally born railway magnate who thought that lively entertainment would attract more tourists and thus increase rail traffic - the theater group now averages about 10 major productions a year, each with a lead time of about eight months. Faced with shrinking audiences and increased competition from all forms of digital entertainment, its producers are trying to make the shows more dazzling...
...Like more established sports, competitive eating has its own body of myth (skinny competitors do better, supposedly because their stomachs have more room to expand), strategy (dunking food into juice or lemonade helps it dissolve) and controversy: when world champion Takeru Kobayashi was unseated last year by American Joey Chestnut, who ate 66 dogs to Kobayashi's 63, the Japanese nosher was allegedly hobbled by a jaw injury. ("I believed he was fully recovered," Chestnut said.) Top eaters train for months before a big event, and for good reason - this year, some 40,000 fans are expected to come watch...
...caught up to Chestnut and, were it not for the upchuck at the end, might well have tied for the championship. Chestnut, 23, a California college student nicknamed "Jaws," has also trained rigorously since eating just 20.5 hot dogs in a 2005 Nathan's qualifier. Last month he obliterated Kobayashi's world record of 53.75 franks by nearly six whole hot dogs. He politely calls Kobayashi an "animal" but it was clear that Chestnut was unafraid of his elder...
...Compounding Kobayashi's loss, on top of his jaw injury and failure to set a record seventh win, was the fact that this was his first Nathan's contest without his mother. Kobayashi said before wiping tears from his eyes that he wanted to retire when she was diagnosed with cancer, but she pleaded with him to continue doing what he loved. He bought each of them a Live Strong bracelet. He continues to wear...