Who Is The Man Behind Bayashi TV?

Anyone with internet access and a phone can tell their story to the world, and one Japanese man with a love of food has found a quick international following. Hiroaki Nakabayashi, well known as Bayashi, began creating ASMR, mukbang, and cooking videos on YouTube under his channel Bayashi TV. He is known for wearing a wide, infectious smile while creating dramatic food dishes. Since the creation of his channel in 2019, he has amassed over 30 million subscribers on YouTube alone. Despite creating his channel much later than some of the biggest creators, Bayashi has risen to be one of the most popular YouTube cooking channels today.

Bayashi has millions of people watching him deep fry butter and crack fresh eggs every day, but he actually doesn't say much in his videos. The ASMR nature of his content leaves much of the person behind the creator up to the imagination. This leaves viewers wondering who, exactly, is the man behind Bayashi TV? If you've only seen a few of his cooking videos, all that is evident is that he is a man who loves somewhat eccentric food choices. Under the cheese-smothered, raw egg-topped dishes he loves to bite into, Bayashi is quite a complex and impressive individual.

The 36-year-old man behind Bayashi TV has taken over the cooking side of the internet in Japan and is making strides as a huge international influencer. It's not just YouTube that has people flocking to follow the chef, but TikTok as well. In fact, he has almost double the followers on that platform. Bayashi ranks in the top 25 TikTokers by follower count, with over 50 million people following his channel. For reference, that's more than household names like Ariana Grande and fellow chef Gordon Ramsay.

One untold truth of mukbang is that a lot of people watch it, which has surely helped creators like Bayashi rise to fame. Still, as far as views go, Bayashi's TikTok videos almost always get over a million views. This is not an easy feat for most TikTokers, and his videos regularly surpass 10 million views, with select collaborations soaring over 100 million views. Almost all of Bayashi's content is original and while he does make use of trends sometimes, the majority of his content is his own specialized themes with minimal hashtags. Bayashi's success is overall working on his own self-made momentum, which is something special in and of itself.

It seems like every other swipe of the internet is a cringey McDonald's mukbang shot in the driver's seat of a car. This relaxed, stream of consciousness type of videoing is what a lot of creators have defaulted to for regular content. There is nothing wrong with this kind of quick content, but Bayashi clearly takes a different approach. His videos are high quality and almost meticulous in production; they are almost never so blasé as to be just him in front of a camera doing his thing. 

There are ASMR and mukbang creators who take their content to the next level and put some production value into their videos. Still, quite a few of the most popular ASMR videos are basic in nature. ASMR and mukbang aren't typically backed by authenticity, and that is where Bayashi is creating something different. His content has a certain aesthetic, and offers more value than just pleasing sounds and visuals.

It's not just Bayashi TV's featured videos that have evident effort — there's beauty in his vlogs as well. When Bayashi sets out to give us a slice of his life, he does so with deliberate creativity. He sets up a shot like a documentarian with gorgeous candid cinematography. This style, quality, and pure effort put forth by Bayashi is a slice of fresh air in the current fast content world we are living in.

When you consider that Bayashi seemed to overall be a one man show, his production and brand are both incredibly impressive. He didn't start totally from scratch, as he had some content production under his belt from his job as a fitness trainer. However, his cooking career is entirely self taught.

The internet not only gave Bayashi a home where he could express himself and make a living, but it also gave him the resource to be able to figure out his niche. He researched cooking and what kind of content would best benefit his brand, and learned along the way. While there are certainly some chef secrets to be learned in culinary school, Bayashi has picked up a thing or two while taking inspiration from other chefs and food creators. As his channel and content have grown over the years, so have his skills and techniques used in the kitchen.

The production value and attention to detail shows in his content, but the quality of the food Bayashi is eating on his channel is pretty top notch as well. With his success has come high ticket food like huge chunks of Wagyu beef, but he also features some pretty amazing fruits and veggies. Bayashi frequently shows viewers how he sources ingredients like cucumbers, watermelon, apples, and other veggies.

In his early years of creating content, Bayashi worked part time on his family's apple farm. In a vlog where he showed fans a day in his life, he walked viewers through his morning routine. On this particular morning, he woke up at 5 a.m. to arrive at his family's orchard at 6 a.m. Even though he is likely focusing on his creator career at this point, he still often features his family's farm and other agricultural scenes near his home. He shows himself preparing and eating fresh veggies, as well as exactly where these farm fresh ingredients come from.

One of the most obvious examples of the importance he places on fresh fruit and vegetables comes from a recent video where he tries a watermelon, just to say that it isn't fresh enough. He then shows himself driving to a farm where an elder is tending the watermelon patch. They then prepare a freshly picked watermelon, which yields a much better result than the original, bland watermelon.

Though he doesn't speak much in his videos, his family is featured often. We get hints of different family members frequently when Bayashi shows viewers his time on the farm or harvesting fruits and vegetables. We also see the YouTuber share meals and conversations with people we can pretty confidently assume are family members, as they recur throughout the years of content.

On rare occasions, Bayashi will feature a family member and reveal his relationship to them. We see this on more recent videos especially. This could have to do with the creator becoming more proficient in English and comfortable captioning his videos in the language. Fans are typically excited when they get these family confirmations, happy they get to know a bit more about the creator. Of course, his Japanese fans may have had these insights longer, as most of his spoken and written words are in Japanese.

In one of his vlogs we can see Bayashi grill outside while children play and a mother puts a jacket on her son, an all too familiar image for families who cook out. In another, Bayashi features his brother as they try jelly and toast. It's these little sneak peeks that give Bayashi's channel a touch of sincerity.

Before he created his now massive YouTube channel and began his career as an influencer, Bayashi was a personal trainer. Interestingly enough, it was the end of this career that sparked the emergence of his online presence. The gym he trained at went bankrupt and closed down, spurring the need for income. His new career has brought about an undeniable success, but he hasn't left fitness behind completely.

We frequently see Bayashi doing some kind of farming or labor outdoors, but he makes time for a standard workout as well. In one of his vlogs, the TikToker reveals that he works out in the afternoon around 3:30 p.m. It appears he does these workouts in his own modest home gym, so we can happily assume it's a regular part of his routine and life.

Though he seems to regularly work out at home, Bayashi has also made at least one video at an actual gym. He featured One Piece Gym in 2023 while showing off his muscles, though it's not clear if he regularly visits the anime-themed gym. With the amount of cheese and fried food Bayashi makes and consumes, it's probably a good thing that he is so health conscious otherwise.

If you watch just a few of Bayashi's food-centric videos, it's easy to see a few patterns emerge. Bayashi uses an impressive amount of farm fresh ingredients in some of his dishes and features farming on a number of videos. However, his golden trio that appears time and time again in his content seems to be made up of eggs, meat, and cheese. According to an interview he did with Tasting Table, this base of ingredients is a product of his counting carbs diet.

When the TikTik profile of a creator with over 50 million followers simply says, "I like cheese," it's probably a sign that a wild amount of cheese is about to grace your screen. For all the millennials out there, the amount of cheese Bayashi uses in his videos will be a bit reminiscent of Epic Meal Time. He not only smothers some meals in it, but he is known to deep fry an impressive and excessive amount of the dairy staple.

Another signature to Bayashi's content is his use of raw egg yolk. He will often top a meal off with at least one egg yolk, much to the chagrin of a lot of viewers. The videos that feature the raw yolks are typically full of comments begging the creator to stop using the topping. As for the meat portion of Bayashi's golden trio, he uses a variety of beef and seafood in his videos.

It's impossible to please everyone in this world, which is very much evidenced by the fact that a cooking channel like Bayashi TV can be seen as highly vexing. The truth is, though, that some people really dislike the way Bayashi cooks. A tall stack of deep fried cheese singles, raw egg yolk toppings, and blended wagyu beef are all apparently things that make some very real waves online.

Reddit is one place where Bayashi's content has found a home with some haters. Members of a subreddit love to hate Bayashi, with his content often getting posted there for commenters to go in on his specific choices and techniques. While he has some defenders, participants of this subreddit overwhelmingly dig on Bayashi and his whole-stick-of-butter-eating ways.

Of course, quite a bit of Bayashi's content is controversial as a stylized strategy. He gets a massive amount of views and followers, and a good amount of that likely comes from people who think his creations look less than appetizing. While some of the dishes he posts look quite good, others are obvious gimmicks that people feed into.

As a Japanese creator, it's only natural that some of the dishes featured on his channel are wildly different from ones you would find in other countries across the world. Still, quite a lot of people are surprised when presented with the amount of raw food Bayashi prepares and consumes on the channel. Including these types of dishes in his content not only increases his viewership from shock value alone, but also presents some culture into the lives of his international viewers.

Bayashi loves to include raw egg yolk in and on his dishes. This is totally normal and one of the preferred ways to prepare dishes in Japan. Raw beef is often seen in his content as well, and he isn't afraid to take massive bites out of the uncooked dishes he prepares.

Bayashi TV features a large amount of deep fried food, which is a theme in a lot of food entertainment channels. Deep fried chicken ASMR are especially beloved on TikTok, but Bayashi leans more toward frying cheese, sandwiches, and even whole sticks of butter.

As most large influencers have found, platforms like TikTok and YouTube can grant financial freedom and bring in quite a large amount of money. According to YouTube CEO Neal Mohan in a public letter, YouTube paid out over $70 billion to their partner program from 2020 to 2023. There is an almost inconceivable amount of possibilities that come from the massive amount of followers and views that Bayashi is seeing on his accounts. At least some of the income Bayashi has seen from his efforts has gone back to his community.

In a recent video, fans can see Bayashi cooking in an industrial sized kitchen, creating quite a large dish. By the end of the video, it is revealed that Bayashi is not cooking for his own mukbang content, but for a school of local children. Sure, he posted some great content out of the interaction, but his hands-on approach to giving back is admirable.

Bayashi hasn't been shy about promoting farm fresh eating. He has featured his own family's farming endeavors, but has given shout outs to other farms as well. He featured a cucumber farm in his home prefecture of Gunma, stating that farms are seeing a hike in production costs while not raising prices much to match. He goes out of his way to use his platform to lift up his community.

Bayashi is a fitness trainer and farmer-turned-chef, and he can also include author on the list. After finding success in creating his own dishes for others' entertainment, Bayashi compiled his very own cookbook. In his interview with Tasting Table, Bayashi said the title of his cookbook when translated to English is, "The ultimate meal that makes you hungry even though it's extreme. Bayashi's ultra low-carb recipes." We know, the title is a mouthful, but so are the dishes within. You can expect the same kind of intense and over-the-top recipes that flow along your TikTok feed to be laid out in the cookbook.

Unfortunately, if you want step-by-step instructions on how to create some of the most overzealous fried food towers that have graced Bayashi TV, you'll have to know a little Japanese. Bayashi's mouthful of a cookbook is currently only in Japanese and available on the Japanese market. That is not to say that will always be the case, though, because Bayashi has stated if it sees success, then it will make an international run as well.

Like a lot of popular creators on YouTube and TikTok, Bayashi has collaborated with other internet personalities. He has crossed over with other popular Japanese creators, made easy because of their proximity and shared follower base. Bayashi has also been featured on other accounts dedicated to food, as well as featured other chef creators like Nick DiGiovanni. One of his biggest collaborations featured Mr. Beast, who is an internet veteran and has maintained a place on the top of the YouTube food chain for quite some time.

The more Bayashi grows, the more he seems to show off these collaborations and relationships with other creators. This makes sense, as he gains more resources to pull off these high profile collabs as he gains even more traction on the online platforms. They're generally well received by his viewers and add a nice variation in Bayashi's content.

Though he has not officially collaborated with Gordon Ramsay, he has been on the iconic chef's radar. Ramsay had some harsh words for a TikTok salmon recipe in a reaction video to one of Bayashi's more gimmicky posts, quickly stating how ridiculous and raw it was. The chef seemed good natured, though, and didn't drop any curse words when critiquing the ASMR food video. The slight didn't seem to bother Bayashi, though, as he posted a response to the attention, noting that he was just happy to get noticed by the star.