If you made your way here from my YouTube channel, chances are you’ve wondered what else this site can do besides just providing a searchable index of all of my reviews. To that end, I’ve decided to take advantage of the medium that is WordPress and publish some reviews on here that won’t be featured on the YouTube channel.
Read more: Noodle Journey Site-Exclusive Reviews Are Coming!I know for some of you, that probably isn’t great news because you enjoy video as your preferred method of learning about new products. And for others among you, maybe this news is a great relief because you can read a quick review at your own pace without listening to me talk endlessly. Either way, I think you longtime viewers of my channel are owed a bit of an explanation as to how it came to this.
You see, back throughout 2024, I had hoped to get deeper into my ever-growing queue of noodles by publishing a minimum of two videos per week. For that to happen, I needed to grow a bit of a buffer so that I had content filmed & edited a few weeks before it was due to be published so that I could maintain such an aggressive schedule. I’ve got younger kids who haven’t quite learned what “quiet time” means yet, and so being able to film at home during my lunch breaks and edit in my other spare time was key to keeping the channel on track. And, well, between my work life and my personal life, getting that schedule going and that buffer built-up never happened. Further complicating things, back in August I started a new job which gave me even less time to film during my lunch breaks, because there were many days when I ended up working through lunch or just didn’t have a long enough break in the day to get something filmed. That more demanding work schedule has continued through to the time of this writing, and in fact has gotten even more demanding for reasons I won’t go into.
I can hear some of you now: “Just film at night, you lazy asshole!” I do actually film one night a week (or on a weekend if I have a quiet house), but I have to be careful about how I do it; I usually eat what I review (if I like what I review) because I am not a food waster, and that means I’m eating a late-night second-dinner after my kids go to bed. Not the best thing for my digestive system or my overall health if I’m doing that multiple times per week. Obviously if something gets a bad review and goes in the trash, there’s nothing to worry about. But if I enjoy something, I’m going to finish it. And then, either way, I still have to find the time to edit what I film.
So I decided that since I have this nifty new website, I’m going to split my reviews up between videos and blogs. On the YouTube channel, you’ll still see at least one video per week (unless I fall really behind and need a catch-up week), and here on this site, you’ll see exclusive written reviews with photos that I can churn out a lot faster. The YouTube channel will showcase the products that I think are better off being put to film, such as really cool products that I want to show off to my viewers, or products that I know cater to the widest audience (like Buldak & Shin products for example, or mega-reviews of product lines with mass appeal/interest). This site, on the other hand, will be the home of the reviews that are less impactful and don’t need me rambling on about things for ten minutes (for example, things like Instant Lunch, limited-time Japanese Cup Noodles, cheap dollar store finds, stuff that’s been discontinued that I happen to still have in my possession, etc.).
Splitting the reviews this way not only gets me to my goal of having more than one review out per week, but it lets me get through my, quite frankly, embarrassingly large queue of noodles that I have yet to review, and it gets me through that queue at a higher rate than I could if I was only focused on YouTube content.
The site is obviously still in its infancy, and so I may make further refinements to the review process as it comes along. But for now, you should start seeing site-only reviews pop up within the next week or two.
Hope to see you then! If you have any suggestions for site-exclusive reviews, leave me a comment below or on the channel.
