It's almost Bon, the festival of the dead, a time when the spirits return to their ancestral homes. On our island, that's a lot of returnees. With the population dying off so rapidly, the ratio of spirits to living people is so great that at Bon, the living become a minority.

And not just the people's spirits that come back, apparently. Last year, my next-door neighbor's dog died, and she put out offerings during Bon at his grave in back of her house. I also put out offerings for the dog as a good neighborly gesture. With the current pet boom, where the number of pets in Japan has surpassed the number of children, you can imagine that in another decade, Bon will have gone completely to the dogs.

But traditionally, at Bon Japanese people pray to their ancestors. Unless you're a "gaijin" like me and don't have any Japanese ancestors. Luckily, however, one of my neighbors offered me one of hers. Let me explain.