What was going on when I was born?

The Amway Corporation, which uses an army of part-time workers to sell household items door-to-door, pleaded guilty today to a criminal charge of defrauding the Canadian Government of more than $28 million (Canadian) through customs violations. Gregory T. Evans, Chief Justice of the Ontario Supreme Court, ordered Amway and its Canadian unit, Amway Canada Ltd., to pay total fines of $25 million, believed by legal analysts to be the largest fine ever assessed for a fraud conviction in Canada, and perhaps the largest ever paid by a corporation anywhere in recent years. Amway's attorney paid the fine immediately. Justice Evans said Amway had engaged in ''a web of deception,'' and was ''not a very responsible corporate citizen in Canada'' in violating customs law from 1965 to 1980.

The United States and Japan announced today that they had agreed to take steps to strengthen the yen's value against the dollar in an effort to reduce the huge American trade deficit with Japan. As part of the move toward the ''internationalization'' of the yen, a process that would tend to raise demand for it, Japan said it would permit a market for forward, or futures, transactions in the yen beginning April 1. This would encourage Japanese exporters to bill their customers in yen rather than dollars or other foreign currencies. Such a development would widen the role of the yen as a trading currency and, by bolstering traders' needs for it, strengthen its value.

In an effort to limit increases in subway, bus and commuter railroad fares early next year, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority is considering raising tolls on the Triborough Bridge and five other crossings to $1.50 from $1.25. Under the plan, the bridge revenues would be used to hold a fare increase on subways and buses to 90 cents, averting a threatened $1 fare. The fare is now 75 cents. On the Metro-North Commuter Railroad and the Long Island Rail Road, the bridge revenues would be used to keep the increase below a projected 50 percent.

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 11, 1983 The Economy Fees for access to long-distance networks would be blocked by a bill passed by the House last night. The F.C.C. had authorized local telephone companies to charge the fees. A Senate panel has passed similar legislation, but President Reagan is supporting A.T.& T.'s contention that the fees are needed and could veto legislation that prohibits the fees. (Page D1.)

Syrian antiaircraft batteries opened fire on four American F-14 fighter jets today as they flew a reconnaissance mission over Syrian military positions in Lebanon, a military spokesman in Damascus said. In Washington, a Defense Department spokesman confirmed that a single Navy F-14 Tomcat encountered ''what appeared to be antiaircraft fire'' on a routine flight over Lebanon today, but said the plane returned safely to its carrier base on the Dwight D. Eisenhower without having been hit. Not Unusual, Weinberger Says Defense Secretary Caspar W. Weinberger discounted any notion that the incident meant Syria was preparing for a clash with United States forces. He said it was not ''unusual or surprising'' for reconnaissance flights to be fired on, saying he could think of ''one or two situations'' in which this had happened.

The House of Representatives tonight approved by a voice vote legislation that would block the telephone industry from charging a monthly fee for household and business phones to be linked to long-distance networks. Earlier in the evening, the House rejected, 264 to 142, a Republican version of the bill that would have postponed the monthly fee until 1985 rather than kill it entirely. The Federal Communications Commission has authorized the nation's local phone companies to begin on April 3 to charge $2 a month for residential phones and up to $6 a month for business telephones for access to long-distance networks. These fees would rise in subsequent years.

''When I came home from Vietnam, I was treated like dirt.

President Reagan, addressing the ''good and dear friends of Japan,'' called on this nation and its Parliament today to join the United States in ''a powerful partnership for good.'' Mr. Reagan, the first American President to address Japan's national legislature, said the two countries Excerpts from speech, page A7. should work together to eliminate the world's nuclear weapons and to increase its economic freedom. In Washington Thursday, the United States and Japan announced an agreement under which the two countries will take steps to strengthen the value of the yen against the dollar in an effort to reduce the American trade imbalance with Tokyo. (Page D1.)

The Senate approved a bill early today that would reconstitute the United States Commission on Civil Rights as a hybrid eight-member agency appointed jointly by the President and Congress. The vote was 79 to 5. The bill was the result of a compromise worked out late Thursday night among Senators from both parties, civil rights groups and White House officials. In the commission's present form, all six members are appointed by the President. The commission makeup became an issue after President Reagan dismissed three members in an effort to bring the philosophy of the bipartisan advisory agency closer to his own.

A reference in the ''Inside'' directory on page A1 in some late editions yesterday misidentified the auction house that sold Mark Rothko's 1958 painting ''Black, Maroons and White'' for a record $1,815,000. It was Sotheby Parke Bernet.

NEIL SIMON likes to wander through Bloomingdale's on weekends and to lunch nearby at Serendipity. Judy Collins goes on movie binges - three a day, and it would be four if her boyfriend didn't draw the line. Cynthia Gregory plays pool and goes to the race track. Beverly Sills likes to duck into the American Museum of Natural History to visit the dinosaurs - or whatever else might catch her eye. For most New Yorkers, the weekend offers a blessed reprieve from all the things they have to do in their workaday lives and a chance to do some things just because they want to. As a cultural mecca of endless richness and diversity, the city is home to a stellar array of figures in each of the arts, and like their less-famous neighbors, they, too, cherish the time to enjoy the pleasures New York has to offer.

Prices of Treasury notes and bonds rose sharply yesterday as the Government completed this week's three- part $16 billion note and bond financing at yields significantly lower than expected when the week began. By late in the day, prices of Treasury bonds were up by as much as 1 5/8 points, or $16.50 per $1,000 bond, while new 3- and 10-year Treasury notes were traded at prices well above the average levels set at auctions earlier this week. Short-term interest rates declined as much as a tenth of a percentage point during the day, with six-month Treasury bills bid at 8.91 percent, down from 8.99 percent. ''There was certainly a lot of money around to be invested this week,'' said Jay Goldinger, a Beverly Hills, Calif., broker.