Comment by mc3301

Japanese menus do overwhelmingly include photos, and most of the bigger restaurants have moved to tablets with, of course, images.

The plastic 3d models are mostly in tourist areas.

There are so many restaurants in Japan (especially sushi, soba, tonkatsu, ramen, and izakaya) that have no images whatsoever. Often a handwritten menu or even wall-mounted menus are all that are available.

It's a confirmation bias thing: people come to Japan and go to restaurants with photos on the menu and food models, they think it represents all of Japan. They don't read Japanese, so they may not even know that they walking past a great restaurant without any food displayed outside nor images on menus inside.