Turning 50 - Indonesian Style!

Yesterday, after a great bus tour around the city of Surabaya, we had a birthday lunch at a Japanese restaurant with about 20 of August's relatives.  I've decided that, next to the honking, the second most frequent activity here is eating.  This restaurant had a huge buffet of all kinds (and I mean ALL kinds) of uncooked meats which you could go through and choose for yourself. It was called "Yaki Niku".

There's the squid I decided to forego.

Then you go back to your table where you cook it yourself on a little gas grill sunken in the middle of the table.  So, using chopsticks, you dip your meat into a sauce akin to teriyaki sauce, grill, dip again, then eat; all the time using the same set of chopsticks. 8-)

All those little bowls are dipping sauce.  I lost track of which sauce was the before-cooking and after-cooking dipping bowl so I through caution to the wind, shoved aside all thoughts of cross-contamination, and thoroughly enjoyed the entire experience.  You can pray I make it back to American soil alive.  :)

Apparently, not feeling that they had fed us enough, his family had THREE birthday cakes to choose from. Here are two of them.

When it came time to light the candles, the restaurant started piping in their own version of "Happy Birthday to You" in various different languages through the overhead speakers.  It was at this point, I decided a video was worth more than any description I could ever write.  Enjoy!

Then August and Kongha began cutting the cakes.  Notice the difference in the portion sizes they cut? The big joke was that August was cutting American portion sizes.  :)

It was a really fun day and I think August felt very loved!