Finding a way to celebrate food – and the Obon Festival – despite ugly food allergies.

At any given moment, Shiho Fukushima can go from a buoyant, life-of-the-party epicurean enthusiast to something else entirely. Her nose congests. Gas cramps grip her gut. Inflammation goes crazy. Itchiness seizes her skin. Hives – even welts – appear in painful places.

All it takes is a little flour in the air. Or a drop of beer on someone’s hand as they hug her. Or a fork exposed to soy or oil or crumbs and not cleaned before she ate with it.

“It’s like I’ve been hit by a bus,” she says. “Like something’s kicking me from inside. I get severely down, lethargic, miserable – I want to pass out and cry at the same time. Which is so not me.”

It is also intensely ironic, if not all-out self-endangering, as she works around flour, soy sauce, and beer as the general manager of the Monterey outpost of Ocean Sushi Deli (645-9876). And she relentlessly writes reviews for Yelp! and the Weekly. Her career choice is a little like someone with vertigo going into skydiving. Most of her own menu – 194 items all told – is off-limits. She can’t share food and drinks with others, and sometimes has to sneak to a sink to wash off a kiss from a friend. She checks labels of lotions, condiments, shampoo – “anything I touch,” she says – and avoids gum, candy, soda, beer, whiskey, bottled juice or anything fried at a restaurant because the oil is likely cross-contaminated.

“I can puff up like a pufferfish,” she says. “Severely bloated. I’m talking at least seven months pregnant.”

But this challenge – which she has to confront not just every time she’s hungry, but every time her customers are – has helped her shed 40 pounds in the two and a half years since her disease was diagnosed, and it has made her smarter and stronger.

It’s also done the same for others. When she stepped forward to give this Sunday’s annual Obon Festival at the Monterey Peninsula Buddhist Temple in Seaside the gluten-free station she was desperately missing a year ago, she printed out a dossier on celiac disease, leaky gut and gluten-free diets for the 30-person festival committee, including event chair Ellie Hattori.

“She is so friendly to everyone she comes across – she’s never met a stranger,” Hattori says. “But she’s also been educational, giving us a new way of looking at leaky gut and gluten-intolerance. She’s such an advocate.”

She educates me as well. Celiac disease means her auto-immune system turns on every bit of gluten with a buffet of allergic reactions and 300 wicked symptoms. (Fukushima counts 100 she’s experienced.) One percent of the population has it, but more than 80 percent don’t know it. Leaky gut, meanwhile, means porous intestines release problematic toxins and food particles into the blood stream.

At Ocean Sushi – where Fukushima’s family and genial staff serve an extensive motherlode of authentic Japanese bento boxes, onigiri, donburi, ramen, oshinko pickles, lively seaweed salads, miso soup, sashimi, sushi and even little octopus dough balls called takoyaki – she leaps to the register when any one of a rapidly increasing gluten-free customer base asks about wheat-free soy or other items.

“It used to be once every other month,” she says. “Now it’s a few a day.”

Sunday’s Obon Fest, which temple Rev. Jay Shinseki calls “a celebration of gratitude for our lives which are gifted to us by our ancestors,” will draw 4,000 visitors, and merits a visit for its bonsai tree sculptures, Ikebana art displays, tea ceremonies, Buddhist talks, elaborate orchids, martial art demos, Bando-Mitsuhiro Kai dance, thunderous taiko drumming, intricate origami and the cool temple complex itself. But for me, like many, the highlight is the Japanese foods.

Bring on the yakisoba, beef and chicken teryaki, kuri manju bean treats, udon noodles, gyoza dumplings, fresh edamame, kushi katsu pork skewers, tempura everything, mochi ice cream and mochi cakes, bright miso salads, Japanese beer and sake, from 20 different stalls.

The highlight, though, will be a savory flapjack I’ve had only in Osaka. The “Gluten Free Shiho” booth will serve grilled Japanese soul-food pancakes called okonomiyaki, literally “what you want,” named for the customizable combination of grated yam, shredded cabbage, eggs, green onion, thin pork belly, octopus, squid, shrimp, vegetables, kimchi, mochi or cheese. Genki.

The okonomiyaki – made with Fukushima’s preferred Pamela’s Pancake and Baking Mix instead of flour – furnish a peek at her dream. She wants a simple soup shop – two soups a day made with bones from grass-fed cows, maybe a veggie plate and a meat dish – where loaves of bread aren’t allowed in the door, a devoutly pure place to make things easy for folks whose allergies make things hard. Either that or the first gluten-free Japanese-style pub, or izakaya, in the world. Having completed formal (and even more informal) training on wheat-free food service, she’s already scheming gluten-free nights with local restaurants.

“Just helping others who have my problem,” she says.

Not that she doesn’t have enough going on. In addition to running her family’s restaurant and scouting seemingly every eatery between Moss Landing and Lucia, she’s an ambassador for her favorite gluten-free company, Udi’s Foods (get their breads at Trader Joe’s), a certified sake professional (her selection is appropriately epic) and an official USTA tennis pro. She’s also taken to managing Ocean’s deliveries and aiding catering missions ranging from the runway with McCall Motorworks Gathering (next one’s Aug. 14) to cliffs over the Pacific with Big Sur Food & Wine (Nov. 7-10). Requests for her gluten-free catered spreads – done with fastidious attention to each detail – are on the rise.

With help from people like her, so is awareness about what a mindful diet can do to you and for you.

“If you’re smart, you can still enjoy yourself,” she says. “It does take work, but now I’ve done that work for people, and done it the hard way. I have the scars and the hives to prove it.”

And the inspiring spirit too.

~ QUICKBITES ~

• Joe Rombi’s La Mia Cucina (373-2416) is no longer Rombi’s – at least in title. He sold it to new owners who promise they’ll maintain the menu and strong service.

• Kai Lee Creamery and its tasty ice creams soon join the lineup of shops in the American Tin Cannery in Pacific Grove.

• Plucking from 1,000 on-property plants, Cal Stamenov dishes lavender-rubbed prime beef tenderloin and lavender-cured king salmon, wunderkind Ben Spungin summons suitably insane lavender desserts and guests learn to distill lavender and blend perfumes and body oils as part of the The Lavender Harvest Celebration ($95) at Bernardus Lodge (658-3574) Saturday, July 13.

• Kula Ranch Island Steakhouse (883-9479) now rocks a sushi-sake Sunday deal with a bottle of hot rice wine and a roll for $9.95. The nice patio and pet menu are doggy friendly now too.

• Point Pinos Grill (648-5774) partners with Ninkasi Brewing Company Thursday, July 18, for a big-flavored beer dinner ($70) featuring all sorts of dynamic pairings to food including roasted heirloom tomato tart with Tumalo Farms gouda, flash broiled salmon involtini with seabean citrus fennel salad, sous vide pork mole poblanos with summer squash and a vanilla semifreddo parfait.

• Scheid Vineyards (455-9990) has something different – and something special – with its 12-varietal blend Odd Lot Red. Get the lowdown on wine finds with the foodie newsletter – subscribe@mcweekly.com.

• The latest “Meet the Farmer” meal ($55, 622-5445) at the Hyatt Carmel Highlands gets fishy Saturday, July 13, as local legend Jerry Wetle talks fresh catch and Chef Matt Bolton prepares a four-course lunch including wild king salmon, halibut-avocado ceviche, tempura spot prawns and California white sea bass over crab and dried heirloom tomato. Then Wednesday, July 17, the Sunset Lounge bartending team leads a cocktail class ($55) on Hemingway daquiris, Ninth Wards and Sicilian Crustas.

• Holistic Health Counselor Audrey Fontaine gets raw Saturday, July 13, at the John Steinbeck Library with a free talk on the power of uncooked fruits, vegetables, nuts and seeds, and samples of green smoothies, almond hummus and gluten-free crackers. RSVP at 758-7311.

• Cannery Row Brewing Company (643-CRBC) doesn’t do many things quietly, but the 3-6pm weekday happy hour has quietly become one of the area’s best, with $4 craft pints, $5 dealer’s choice cocktails and killer sliders ($5 for two), cheddar-bacon fries ($5), and the superlative avocado-ahi poke tower ($6) at nice discounts. Late night menu has debuted too, with things like the grown-up grilled cheese with applewood bacon ($10.95), grilled fish tacos ($11.95), three-hour smoked hot wings ($12.95/dozen) and drunken fries with gravy, fried egg, bacon and queso fresco ($7.95).

• Marvin Gaye: “I wish that being famous helped prevent me from being constipated.”