[Ruarl]

I mean, how else would you distinguish that restaurant from "Food was sublime, service ranged from movie-star charm to invisibly dealing with my every need, payment was waived in favour of a small donation to my favourite cat charity. 5 stars"

[petronio]

In my view scores are relative to expectations, usually tied to price. A restaurant with a $50 meal and a 3 star score will likely have better food than one with a $5 meal and 5 stars on an absolute scale, but the people who got their $5 meal were happy with it and the ones with the $50 meal were disappointed.

[Ruarl]

Mine too! I was drawing the comparison between the two schools of thought using an example. I imagine, but don’t have any evidence, that the absolute scale dominates culturally in Japan, and the relative scale in the west.