Ghengis Khan

In March my neighbour's wife planned a surprise party for his birthday. She decided to have it at this well-known Mongolian restaurant near where we live.

When you first approach the restaurant it is a little disconcerting as it appears to be not only empty or closed, but not well kept. However, that is the shop below the restaurant. Apparently the owners are actual Mongolians and so they decided to set up the restaurant as a traditional Mongolian "tent". It was a clothed dome with intricate fabrics throughout; once inside the shady outside was quickly, and thankfully, forgotten.

There were traditional Mongolian outfits lining the walls of the tent and we soon found out that they intended for us all to wear them!

(Jon and Mai dressed up in traditional Mongolian outfits)

The food was really interesting and from what I heard from the others, quite delicious (it was mostly lamb and other non-chicken meats and therefore taboo for Jon). They had a unique selection of drinks, one of which included "horse milk" (whatever that really entails!--I did try it, though. It was really... sweet, yet salty).

(Sample of the food that was served)

Afterwards we all sang songs in Mongolian while they passed around a communal horn shaped cup for each person to take a drink from. There were other groups not with the party in the restaurant but we all got along really well together.

(Mongolian song with communal horn cup)

In fact, at one point, the owners insisted that the birthday boy dress up like a warrior lord and two others (one from our group and one poor, unsuspecting Japanese guy) dress up as what appears to be his servant boys.

(Andrew, decked out in the warrior lord outfit, busting a move)

(Dante and the random Japanese guy in the "servant" outfits")

Finally, it was time to move the celebrations downtown but not before a group of Japanese girls asked to take their picture with me in exchange for some free baseball game tickets.

(Group photo!)

Oh Japan!!