Every now and again I see a post on Facebook of a global map showing which sports are  the most popular in each country. Of course there are no real surprises for the likes of England (football), the USA (american football), Australia (Aussie Rules Football), Canada (ice hockey), India (cricket) and so on. However, in East-Asia it’s often a different story.

Sure, football, baseball and basketball are popular (depending on the country) but so are the likes of table tennis, gymnastics, figure skating and badminton.I have barely ever watched the latter, even in the Olympics with the one and only exception being sometime in the early 2000s when I saw Great Britain’s Gail Emms in the mixed doubles of something or another!

Keen to see what it’s like to be a spectator at some new sports this year, I found out about this tournament a few months ago and promptly bought a ticket to see the quarter finals at Yoyogi National Gymnasium which was where I saw Oasis in 2005 and a basketball play-off final in 2017. It was also used as a filming location for a couple of 1967 movies; ‘Walk Don’t Run‘ and ‘You Only Live Twice’. I was actually quite surprised at the size of the crowd when I arrived as I just thought it’d be pretty empty on a weekday. However, this is Japan and the land of many old retired people. Plus, the kids were on their summer holiday too.

Lining up in the blazing sunshine to get in ahead of the 10:00 am start was quite brutal with temperatures in the mid-thirties.

Inside it was all very dark though apart from the two bright green coloured courts, and there was a strong smell of sweat amongst the crowd thanks to the aforementioned high climate outside.

Beforehand I just thought the courts would be in two different parts of the arena but they were actually next to each other with only about ten metres between the two of them.

Not a mirror image! China (red) vs Japan blue) on both courts

If you’ve ever tried to watch two or more football matches on various screens at the same time you’ll probably know that it’s not easy. I thought it was difficult enough at the track and field in Yokohama a few months ago when the javelin and long jump or whatever took place simultaneously. That was nothing though compared to this.

As much as you might try to focus on just one match it’s really hard to not get distracted by crowd reactions to the other or to gaze over between points. Consequently you end up seeing very little! I’m not sure what it’s like for the players as they can never be too sure who the crowd are really watching and naturally have to cut out the noise around the other match whilst focusing on their own game. I do recall that a couple of Indonesian players competing barely received any claps at the end of their match as all eyes were on the court next to them where a Japanese representative was present.

Korea vs India in the mixed doubles

To be honest, I was thinking about badminton beforehand from a tennis-type point of view given the similarity (they’re both raquet sports and played on a court with a net etc) between the two sports, and was only thinking about the singles matches when I saw the order of play. Of course they’re two very different sports and little did I know but doubles is actually more exciting, and the speed of the rallies as well as the super-fast reflexes of the players is something else.

Standby for detailed play-by-play accounts of the 20 matches taking place side by side on the two courts!! Only joking!! That would really be dull, and besides it’s hard to remember any really special points being scored which is a problem for me with such sports where points are scored continuously. Maybe that’s why I mostly watch football and rugby as I can remember certain incidents well but for other sports the points scored are often very similar in style.

Once the fifth match had finished bang on 4:00 pm I made an exit as six hours of live badminton was enough. There were still five matches left on the slate, including world number one (and eventual champion!) Viktor Axelsen of Denmark who was the only non-asian athlete taking part on this particular day. If you’re able or willing to spend the whole day there then you certainly get value for money.

Badminton is one of those sports I’ve always felt was really popular and fun to play as a recreational sport but this live experience showed that it can be interesting and entertaining to watch as a spectacle too.

Click here to read ‘My First Table Tennis Match Was The Women’s Title Decider & It Was Epic!’

Click here to read ‘I Finally Got To See Naomi Osaka Play Tennis But It Didn’t Quite Go To Plan!!’

Click here to read ‘Watching Volleyball In Japan Has To Be One Of The Country’s Noisiest Experience’

Click here to read ‘My First Time To Watch Futsal In Japan But Will It Be My Last?’