I love browsing antique shops, mainly in search of new additions to my ever-growing collection of old and forgotten books. The other day, while I was rooting through the dusty bookshelves of a local antique store, I stumbled upon a gem written by one of my favorite authors: “The People of Japan: A Perceptive Portrait of Their Life Today,” by Pearl S. Buck.

The daughter of missionaries, Buck was born in Virginia but spent most of her youth in China, even learning to speak Chinese before she learned English. While she is better known for her novels about life in China, including the bestseller “The Good Earth,” she has also written a number of books about Japan, where she lived in exile for a year after civil war broke out in China.

In “The People of Japan” (Simon & Schuster, 1966), Buck offers a fascinating first-hand account of the people and everyday life in Japan, including a chapter that describes typical Japanese meals and Japanese eating style.

“Food is presented in such a manner that the mere sight of it is delectable, and the eye feasts before the body,” Buck writes in the chapter on Japanese food. The following is an excerpt from the book, in which Buck describes a typical Japanese breakfast:

“In one of three bowls is a raw egg. In the second is rice. In the third is a soup made of bean paste and containing, perhaps, Japanese leek, clams, fried bean curd, spinach or something like it. One beats the egg with chopsticks, adds shoyu (soy) sauce, then pours the egg with shoyu over the rice.

“With the rice-and-egg mixture and the soup, one eats pickled vegetables—pickled eggplant, or ginger or cucumber, for example. Other things might be in the soup, of course. Thin sheets of dried seaweed are a common addition. But by and large, that is breakfast and it is good.

“Many Japanese families now eat an American breakfast. I don’t know why, for to me their breakfast is delicious, but they have come to like oatmeal and porridge and fried eggs.”

Buck goes on to describe a typical Japanese lunch and dinner. Look for more excerpts from her book in the coming weeks.