Nancy Baker, who was baby-sitter for Sally Merrill in earlier books, assumes center stage as she leaves Newton College, near Boston, to take a post reorganizing the kitchens at the School of Most Precious Learning in Tokio. Japan as another culture is communicated very pleasantly. Romance with an Embassy employee, Larry Anderson, varies the absorbing pattern of her days in updating Japanese dietary patterns and coping with a new language. Very sound presentation of Americans interpreting their culture abroad through thinly fictionized fact.