Who Is Bayashi?

Last updated: October 2026

Name (Japanese)	バヤシ — real name Hiroaki Nakabayashi (中林宏明)
Born	1988, Gunma Prefecture, Japan
Category	YouTuber / TikToker (cooking, ASMR, mukbang)
Active since	2019 (first YouTube channel), 2020 (TikTok); current channel Bayashi TV launched 2021
Known for	Wordless ASMR cooking shorts and the viral raw salmon and egg yolk video
Platforms	TikTok (50M+ followers), YouTube (35M+ subscribers), Instagram — as of late 2026

If you have ever been hypnotized by a sixty-second video of raw salmon being sliced into glistening strips, there is a good chance you were watching Bayashi. The Japanese creator has built one of the largest food audiences on the internet with a deceptively simple formula: no talking, extreme close-ups, booming sound effects, and a triumphant first bite at the end. As of late 2026 he has more than 50 million followers on TikTok — the most of any creator in Japan — along with more than 35 million subscribers on YouTube and several million more on Instagram.

Bayashi’s real name is Hiroaki Nakabayashi. He was born in 1988 in rural Gunma Prefecture, a mountainous farming region a couple of hours north of Tokyo. Because his videos contain almost no spoken language, they travel effortlessly across borders, and much of his enormous following comes from outside Japan. His handle, which pairs his name with an avocado emoji, has become shorthand for a very particular style of maximalist comfort cooking: crunchy, cheesy, and loud.

Rise to Fame

Nothing about Bayashi’s early career suggested internet stardom. After attending Kanagawa University, he spent about seven years working as a fitness instructor and personal trainer. When the company he worked for was dissolved in 2019, he suddenly found himself without a job and moved back to his hometown in Gunma, helping out at his family’s apple orchard while he figured out what to do next.

He opened a YouTube channel in October 2019, but it went nowhere. The turning point came in February 2020, when he started posting short cooking clips on TikTok just as short-form video was taking over the internet. One video — fresh raw salmon sliced thin and eaten with raw egg yolk — went explosively viral with overseas viewers, and his follower count took off. In January 2021 he launched a new YouTube channel, Bayashi TV, riding the rise of YouTube Shorts, and it passed 10 million subscribers in roughly two and a half years. By February 2023 he had become the most-followed TikTok creator in Japan, a position he still holds today.

What Bayashi Is Known For

Bayashi’s videos are short-form cooking theater. A typical clip runs about a minute and ends mukbang-style — mukbang being the online genre, originally from South Korea, in which creators eat on camera — with Bayashi devouring the finished dish and flashing a satisfied grin at the camera. His recurring signatures include:

Amplified ASMR sound design: sizzling oil, crunching batter, rhythmic knife work
Indulgent builds heavy on molten cheese, deep-frying, and raw egg yolk
Fresh produce from his family’s farm in Gunma, which grows apples, rice, and vegetables
No narration at all, so the videos work in any language

Despite the calorie-bomb aesthetic, Bayashi is a self-taught cook, and his fitness background still shapes his life off camera: in 2022 he published a Japanese-language cookbook of low-carbohydrate recipes. He has also teamed up with Western food creators, most famously former White House chef Andre “Chef Rush” Rush — their 2023 collaboration has accumulated more than 900 million views — as well as American chef and YouTuber Nick DiGiovanni.

Recent Years

As of October 2026, Bayashi remains Japan’s biggest TikTok creator and one of the most-followed accounts on the platform worldwide, with his TikTok following holding above 50 million and his YouTube channel growing past 35 million subscribers and tens of billions of lifetime views. He continues to post short cooking videos at a steady pace across TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram.

He has also crossed over into Japanese mainstream media, appearing as himself in an episode of the 2023 TBS drama Last Man and featuring in a Coca-Cola television commercial the same year. Through it all, the family apple orchard in Numata City that gave him a landing spot after losing his job still features prominently in his public profile, with its own section on his official website — a reminder that one of the world’s most-watched food creators got his second start on a farm in rural Gunma.

FAQ

Is Bayashi a professionally trained chef?

No. Bayashi is a self-taught cook who worked as a fitness instructor and personal trainer for about seven years before turning to video. His cooking style grew out of home cooking with ingredients from his family’s farm, not restaurant training.

Why doesn’t Bayashi talk in his videos?

His clips rely on ASMR-style sound — sizzling, crunching, chopping — instead of narration. The wordless format means viewers anywhere can enjoy them without subtitles, which is a big reason his audience is so international.

What is Bayashi’s real name and where is he from?

His real name is Hiroaki Nakabayashi. He was born in 1988 in Gunma Prefecture, Japan, and his family runs an apple orchard in Numata City that regularly features in his videos and on his official site.