While researching the concept of “great sports venues” in Asia, it was deeply impressed upon me how enormous was the scope of the topic. Daunting, even.

How to know about that grand old place in what is now Kazakhstan? Or the charming race track in Mongolia? Or whatever it is that Nepal, Uzbekistan, Georgia or Armenia are particularly proud of?

Well, you can’t, really. Because Asia tends to be compartmentalized by those who live here. There is the Middle East (with The Gulf as a subset), the several countries near/around the Caucasus Mountains, the Indian subcontinent, the “stans” stretching across the south of Russia, Southeast Asia, and then China as its own thing and maybe Japan and Korea as a sort of pairing, with maybe the Philippines. Each is almost its own little continent, in terms of world view and interest.

But that was our mandate, to idenfity the top three venues in a continent that includes 60 percent of the world’s people and nearly one-third of its land mass. One that extends from Istanbul to Tokyo, from the Arctic to Indonesia.

Go ahead. Tell me your three favorite venues in Asia. See how they match up to those we settled on.

After lots and lots of poking around … we came up woth Koshien Stadium in Japan as our No. 1 venue in Asia.

What we discovered was that many of Asia’s most interesting venues are quite new, and one of the criteria we had in this series was taking into consideration history and tradition. And lots of the shiny new places in Asia, a continent on the rise, don’t have much of that.

Koshien, however, does. Built in 1924, nearly destroyed by earthquake and World War II, rebuilt, home to the Hanshin Tigers, Japan’s answer to the Chicago Cubs; and where Japan holds two national high school baseball tournaments each year, events that are hugely popular there. A big deal 80 years ago. A big deal now. And that is uncommon here.

Follow the link and read about it at length.

As the No. 2 venue, we pretty much decided it needed to be a cricket venue, from the subcontinent. Luckily, we have a cricket expert from India on our staff, and he wrote about stately Brabourne Stadium in Mumbai. It was great to have our guy — who has been there — to vouch for it. Though it was a tough call for him, with Eden Park (and other grand cricket grounds) also in contention. Read about that one here.

And third? We ignored the “needs some tradition” criteria and went for the concept of “arresting, memorable, grand.” That would be the Water Cube in Beijing, an aesthetic and architectural triumph. More so than the Bird’s Nest stadium next door, which was interesting to look at but barely worked as a venue — and I spent several days and nights sweltering inside it. The Water Cube, however, was a fantastic venue to be inside or to compete in, and you can see if we made a case for it here.

The “others” list of Nos. 4 through 8 does not appear to be up on our website, so I will tell you about them here:

4. Yas Marina Circuit, Abu Dhabi. Opened last year for Formula One racing, and ultra-posh. Sleek and slick.

5. Fenerbahce Stadium, Istanbul. A great place to see a soccer match. (Even if we did have a spirited discussion in the room about whether it counted as “Asia” … because Istanbul is on the Europe side of the Dardenelles … but it’s in Turkey and Turkey is in Asia, see?)

6. Workers Stadium Beijing.  China’s place for big events for almost 50 years, running up to the 2008 Olympics. And it’s still there, when the Bird’s Nest is almost unused.

7. Meydan Racecourse, Dubai. Just up the coast here in the UAE, brand new, and seriously luxe.

8. May Day Stadium, Pyongyang. We kind of hate to give North Korea any love, but the place IS the biggest (non-motors) stadium in the world. Not much in the way of sports goes on in NK. It’s mostly demonstrations of monstrous human logistics. But a big yard is a big yard, and if you want to see a compendium of the biuggest, check them out here. Lots of them in the USA.

To review out “greatest venues by continent” series, you can click here — we have collected the previous elements on one page.

And, really, this has been mind-expanding. I know scads more about places famed and beloved in other parts of the world … that I knew little or nothing about a month ago. And maybe you do now, too.