A friend has sent me a clipping from her home-town paper. It is about a new telephone service staffed exclusively by women, a point they wanted to emphasize in the name they selected. It is called Miss Information. That is not what you get from Tokyo's information service, which is also provided by women. I have probably printed their number more often than any other: (03) 5320-7744. Their name was selected to describe their work: Foreign Residents' Advisory Center. Not so long ago the office published a six-language book that provides answers to the most frequently asked questions called "Q&A, A Guide to Your Life in Japan." The languages are Japanese, English, French, Chinese, Korean and Spanish. It is a handy reference book for anyone but especially for those dealing with international personnel. You will find it at most bookstores carrying English language books. (Published by Gyosei, ISBN4-324-05360-X C0036, 3,360 yen)

A reader asks about a book that was published during the immediate postwar years called The American Way of Housekeeping. She remembers a copy her mother had and wonders if it is still available. First published in 1948, it was a combined effort of the Ladies of the American Community and was a best-seller for years. The cost of the new and revised edition published 20 years later by Tuttle was 1,260 yen or $3.50, a far different exchange rate from today's. It was popular in those nonbilingual days because one page was in English, the other in Japanese. You could point to the proper page when you wanted to instruct your Japanese maid in housecleaning, serving meals, caring for the baby, making beds or baking a meringue torte. Japanese read it to learn the ways of the West.

Actually, what she really wants is a recipe for oatmeal cookies that her mother told her came from that book. She has it, since I have a treasured copy of the 1968 edition. It doesn't seem to have any surprise ingredients except that few recipes in these fat-conscious days would start with creaming together one cup of shortening and one cup of sugar. Also, I would guess most oatmeal cookies these days come from the supermarket.

It is not surprising that the book is no longer available. That Japan no longer exists, nor do I think you could find anything quite like the Ladies of the American Community. Times change, and nothing reflects this better than the books that are being published.

Then I remembered my favorite recipe for oatmeal cookies from another old cookbook, Buy it and Try It, an apt title selected by the Women's Society of the Tokyo Union Church, who published their first edition in 1959. A revised edition is available through the Women's group, phone (03) 3400-0942 for information. And guess what! It is the same recipe. If two of us have such fond memories of oatmeal cookies, perhaps you should all go back to the '50s for your oatmeal cookies.

After you cream the cup of shortening while gradually adding the cup of sugar (brown or granulated), add two eggs well beaten, 4 tablespoons sweet or sour milk, 1 cup chopped raisins, 1 cup chopped nuts, 2 cups rolled oats (oatmeal) and 1 teaspoon vanilla. Mix and sift 2 cups of flour with 3/4 teaspoons soda, 1 teaspoon cinnamon, l/2 teaspoon nutmeg and 1 teaspoon salt, and add to the first mixture. Drop from the tip of a spoon on greased cookie sheets 2.5 cm apart. Bake in a moderate oven (175 C) for 15 minutes. And here we must give credit to Mrs. E.W. (Edith) Bruner who contributed her recipe to both books.

I like the picture on the cover of my early edition, a blonde woman at her local food store, a Japanese woman with a baby on her back dusting the fruit with a wand tipped with assorted strips of fabric from worn-out clothing, a boy holding up a huge white radish, eggs being sold individually, open wooden vats with strange contents, a single light bulb dangling from a cord. It seems like only yesterday. In a way I miss the open vats. In those days you could smell your way along any shopping street as you passed the "miso" dealer, the tea roaster, the pickle-maker. Plastic changed that overnight. Once products were packaged, the rich aromas were also entrapped. It had taken so long to become accustomed to them that it was a bit sad to see them go.