Even if he is focused on the task aren’t his tummy, mouth and throat smaller than the competition? How does he leave the giants three times his size so far behind?
Hot dog eating champ takes 3rd title - 145-pound Japanese winner proves size doesn’t matter
Training. Training that stretches his stomach to a very large size.
I saw him before on Food Network, he broke (doubled!) the Nathan’s record at 50 dogs. And I SWEAR, his stomach didn’t look filled or distended at all. Really quite an amazing feat by a really skinny, shortish Japenese man!
Have you ever opened up a Walkman? The Japanese are obviously very good at making small, powerful things 
And cuz I just thought of this…look how big Paul Newman’s stomach looked after he ate 50 eggs. :eek:
I expect that rather than having the traditional “distended stomach” at his disposal, he rather has an extremely rapid gastric emptying time, with fast small-bowel transit. The small intestine is an average of 23 feet long, and that will hold a lot of dogs. And in the large intestine, you can probably pack them in triple tight, even though it’s about 5 feet long.
So, six inch dog, one dog per six inches of small bowel, 3 dogs per six inches of large bowel, and you’ve got 60 dogs right there, with an empty stomach!
QtM, MD
On NPR’s Morning Edition today, this question was explored. Some of his US opponents are trying his training methods. They stretch the stomach in training by drinking gallons of water and eating several pounds of cabbage. Also, Kobayashi has shown that being huge will prevent you from being a champion eater because the outer belly will not allow the stomach to expand. He also separates the frank and bun, not eating them together. The yanks call that “Japanesing.”
Yeah, that splitting dog and bun was quite the innovation, in the show that I saw. He also dipped the buns in water, for easier chewing I guess…
There was a pizza restaurant in my town some years ago that had an ongoing offer to anyont who could eat a whole pizza in an hour–you got it free. It was a 12" pizza, and I don’t remember how thick it was, but it looked like a cake. The place was open about a year, and in all that time only one person “won.” I asked (well, I had to give it a try), “What did he look like (physically)?” I was told, “Oh, about 5’7”, and 150 pounds."
There was also a Japanese restaurant that had the same sort of offer for a “full course meal,” which was about 5 or 6 different dishes. There had been several winners, whose pictures were posted inside. Every single one of them was a skinny smallish person.
So, to answer the OP, I don’t know–but it happens.