Dirty Eggs and Rice, Tan Standing

We got our shows up and then had our standard Secoond Ciity Celebration dinner at Teppenyaki. This is the Japanese-ish restaurant where they cut things up in front of you and throw things around like Benihana. I have now eaten at 3 different versions of these on the ships. The first one was insane and 2 cast members got double entrees (so a steak, a lobster, scallops, and shrimp). The second one was on the dull side, featuring a chef who spelled out “NCL” in oil before cooking the vegetable appetizer, which made me feel like he was brainwashed. This last one was pornographic. Maybe because we were all one big group? And he knew it? He did some slight of hand with one egg and said “where’s the egg! Where’s the egg!” and we were supposed to discover it in front of his crotch.

He had an oblong mound of rice for 8 people. He said “this is Mt. Fugi!” because they relate everything to Japan. He made a delicious combination of garlic and garlic butter and soy sauce (“coca-cola!”) and then poured it about midway from the center of the rice mound, in a line. He then, after a series of jokes, split the rice down this line and opened it up—I don’t remember any jokes about this. Then he made a bunch of jokes and made the egg/omelette thing you need for fried rice. Then he made this into a cylinder of egg and scallions and said “look at this!” or something and put two empty eggshells on either side of the egg cylinder. He then scooted the egg slowly into the split rice mound. I’m sure there were jokes but I was very, very amazed and didn’t hear any of them. He then said “hahaha” or something and diced that omelette genital with no mercy and then slaughtered the rice genital and we were all amazed and had to talk about it every 10 minutes or so after the meal.

His other high points were asking me if I liked brown bananas and referring to his brown banana and turning a 4” strip of steak into an inch worm and had it walk onto the plate of a cast mate. The worm was my favorite, especially when he had it be indecisive and look from plate to plate.

Then we saw a huge production show which features people with huge Vegas smiles from cultures that dictate it is wrong to have a huge smile. Like Belarus and Ukraine and Italy. My favorite story so far is about one of the Italians—this human being looks like a drawing of the ideal man or like he should be standing wet in crashing waves and selling perfume or Versace cologne. He tans standing up and as the sun moves, he moves. This is obviously fascinating. Off stage, he is frowning and fighting. On stage: the smiiiiiiiile.