Dean's birthday celebration

We had dinner at this highly-recommended yakiniku (BBQ) restaurant as an advanced birthday celebration for Dean. There were 2 Japanese ladies with us so we left the ordering to them. The first thing that came was a dish of assorted vegetables - capsicum, eggplant, carrots, onions, etc - which was great and healthy. Then came the meat...

First was beef tongue and some very fatty pieces of chicken and beef called karubi. Then there was some animal's kidney (Oh, it tasted foul! Dunno what animal cos it wasn't specified) As if the kidney wasn't bad enough, the next dish was something that looked like skin. It was like the animal version of chewing gum - unchewable. Turns out that it was cow's stomach. Puke! Advice: Do not chew too much or the flavour of the sauce will go off and you get the real taste of the stomach, which really makes you gag!

The few pieces in front are the pieces of stomach.

Lesson learnt: NEVER let Japanese order when you go to a yakiniku place!

Then, we went to Katie's place for the birthday cake (made by Kate). The cake was decorated with vegetables in support of Dean's diet, which has been dragging on (unsuccessfully) since Oct 2005. Pretty, isn't it?
And we watched a movie about free-diving called The Deep Blue, which has got to be one of the most boring movies I've ever watched. It felt like it was 7 hours long!