Takako Akasaka ( Japanese: 赤阪尊子 ''Akasaka Takako'' born February 24, 1955) is a Japanese

competitive eater Competitive eating, or speed eating, is an activity in which participants compete against each other to eat large quantities of food, usually in a short time period. Contests are typically eight to ten minutes long, although some competitions c ...

from

Osaka is a designated city in the Kansai region of Honshu in Japan. It is the capital of and most populous city in Osaka Prefecture, and the third most populous city in Japan, following Special wards of Tokyo and Yokohama. With a population of ...

, Japan. She is considered the most successful female competitive eater in Japan. Akasaka has earned multiple nicknames because of her efforts on the competitive eating circuit, including "Armageddon." She is also known as an excellent long-distance eater, specializing in sweet food, which earned her the nickname "The Sweet Queen" or "The Queen" among her admirers. She started competitive eating in 1989 and became famous when she won an annual TV Champion's eating contest in 1994. She won again in 1996 by beating Hirofumi Nakajima and Kazutoyo Arai, who were both soon to be

Nathan's Hot Dog Eating Contest The Nathan's Famous International Hot Dog Eating Contest is an annual American hot dog competitive eating competition. It is held each year on July 4th at Nathan's Famous Corporation's original, and best-known restaurant at the corner of Surf a ...

champions. One of her records is eating 90

ostrich Ostriches are large flightless birds of the genus ''Struthio'' in the order Struthioniformes, part of the infra-class Palaeognathae, a diverse group of flightless birds also known as ratites that includes the emus, rheas, and kiwis. There ...

egg An egg is an organic vessel grown by an animal to carry a possibly fertilized egg cell (a zygote) and to incubate from it an embryo within the egg until the embryo has become an animal fetus that can survive on its own, at which point the a ...

omelette In cuisine, an omelette (also spelled omelet) is a dish made from beaten eggs, fried with butter or oil in a frying pan (without stirring as in scrambled egg). It is quite common for the omelette to be folded around fillings such as chives ...

s in Australia. Takako Akasaka is the first person, male or female, to eat two #13 sandwiches (weighing 7 pounds total) at the

Carnegie Deli The Carnegie Deli is a small Jewish delicatessen, formerly a chain, based in New York City. Its main branch, opened in 1937 near Carnegie Hall, was located at 854 7th Avenue (between 54th and 55th Streets) in Midtown Manhattan. It closed on De ...

in New York City. In 2000, she, along with fellow Japanese eaters Arai and Misao Fujita, entered an annual Nathan's Hot Dog Eating Contest, where she became the first woman to do "The Deuce", eating more than 20 hot dogs with buns in 12 minutes. She finished at third place by eating 22 hot dogs, while Arai won the contest at 25, breaking the previous world record, and Fujita finished second at 24. Her women's world record for hot dog eating was bested by

Sonya Thomas Sonya Thomas (born Lee Sun-kyung on July 26, 1967), also known by her nickname The Black Widow, and "The Leader of the Four Horsemen of the Esophagus", is a South Korean-born American competitive eater from Alexandria, Virginia. Thomas joined ...

, a Korean-born American. Ms. Akasaka remains one of three women to have eaten more than 20 hot dogs at Nathan's ( Carlene LeFevre is the other). Takako Akasaka has decreased the frequency of her contests and has worked as a commentator on Japanese competitive eating programs such as the "Gluttonous Queen" contest broadcast on TV Tokyo in the spring of 2006 on TV Tokyo.

References

External links

Citydo article from 2000 (translated)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Akasaka, Takako 1955 births Living people Japanese competitive eaters People from Osaka Prefecture