Ladies room with orchids. Tung Fat, Yokohama
Cleanliness: 8 - apparently frequently tidied
Scent: 6 - Completely neutral
Decor: 9 - fresh flowers and elegant marble
Fixtures: 6 - nothing extraordinary
Consumables: 5 - average paper; lotion(?) in an unlabeled plastic bottle
OVERALL: 6.8 - clean and nicely decorated, but not a place you’ll linger.

My sister and I became restaurant bathroom connoisseurs during the interminable duration between our last bite of dessert and our parents’ last cigarette.

During fortnightly dinners out, Jenn and I would escape Mom & Dad’s chitchat and examine the fixtures, cleanliness, industrial-grade toilet paper and bottled scents of the ladies’ room. Each bathroom received a rating. Sometimes we took notes, sometimes we merely reported back to the dinner table. We vowed that one day, we’d write a book.

Exactly when this began, I’m not sure. I suspect my mother innocently asked “How was the bathroom?”. For an 8 and 11 year old, that would have been enough. All I can say is thank goodness we didn’t have a camera or the book would be a reality full of entries like the one above.