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The inn and its guest book
In Japan, taking in paying guests is regulated. An inn needs a permit under the 旅館業法 (the Inns and Hotels Act), or, for a room let in a private home, a notification under the 住宅宿泊事業法. That is why Alex's guesthouse must wait for its permit; a friend who stays free is simply a guest in his house. Licensed lodgings must keep a 宿泊者名簿, a register of guests, and the old word for it, 宿帳, still carries a feeling of arrival: signing in, a pen at the front desk, a page that fills over the years. Many small inns also keep a separate notebook where guests write a line or two about their stay, and some of those books go back decades. The のれん, the split curtain hung at a shop's or inn's entrance, is hung out when it opens for the day and taken in when it closes — so to hang one's のれん is to open for business. The grammar of this lesson is the grammar of a first night: が早いか, かたがた, にたえない, ならいざ知らず and ようものなら.