This might be the best of both worlds. The advantages of digital ordering for both customers and restaurants are:

- staff can keep the menu up to date, basically realtime (they have to do it tho)

- orders can directly land in the kitchen instead of through the waiting staff, which may or may not be coming

- payment can also be done thst way

Of course there are more advantages for the restaurants that may or may not go counter to the interests (or rights!) of their customers. E.g. the ability to easily build profiles and sell that data to the highest bidder.

There are downsides too:

- digital menus can fail more easily than paper menus

- congrats you are a waiter, and now IT-support as well

- customers without phones, no/sucky internet or devices that fail to display the menu are out of luck, so you have to provide offline alternatives/own devices that need their own maintenance

- options that are not in the menu and fields that are not offered cannot be filled, e.g. can be a problem if you are allergic rtc.

- unpersonal. Most people prefer not having to jump through hoops.

Using a tablet that is provided by the restaurant can aleviate many (but not all) of these issues.

Yep but many many more have handwritten menus in kanji on the walls, I can read many kanjis by now and I'm still pretty swamped by trying to interpret every shop's different handwriting.

At least once you start decoding the drink section (much more consistent) then you can go back and try to interpret the rest.

I Japan, with their obsession about cleanliness, I can imagine that those tablets are thorougly wiped between each customer. But not in other countries.

Same would apply to paper menus, though? At least it's easier to notice on glossy tablet screens.

Good point, I'd only suspect harder to pick up residue from the porus paper than the smooth glass, and if the paper is made of wood then that is antiseptic by nature. It is true I seen paper menus I did not want to touch, it was replaced so long ago having sample of the food selection and the previous guest's choices on them plenty ... : ) At least some of those one paged ones work just by looking at them in contrast of touch devices mandating the tap and swipe to present things.

I am always interested in this perception. It is clean is some ways but unclean in others like handwashing after bathroom hygiene.

I am not aware of that aspect at all, but cleaning and cleanliness is in focus in general, from childhood, cities are more tidy even by look and the sight of the lady washing up (properly, with water, sponge, having a custom belt with containers for the tools and liquids used in the process) the sidewalk after cleaning up the poo of her dog is burnt into my retina.

Certainly there is a social pressure to clean and keep social order. It is one of those things that as multiple layers though, the streets are usually clean, people generally fall in line and don't make a mess but it does not mean everything is clean (like commercial kitchens).

A nice middle ground yet that tablets can be costly for restaurants to implement and maintain

An even nicer and cheaper middle ground is a color-printed menu with photos, and/or a larger menu with photos over the counter. For customer, it's all the benefit of a digital menu with none of the downsides.

Of course, all the downsides are the very reason restaurants are switching to digital menus in the first place, which is something people need to be reminded of. In cases of "I can't believe they replaced a perfectly good X with inferior but 'modern tech' Y", the surprise is usually the person not realizing the vendor is adversarial, and Y is giving some extra benefit to them at the expense of the customer.

and of course, weekend, daily or hourly price changes. You cant surge on a printed menu.

It is almost exactly the same.

Also in Japan, many restaurants have a vending machine you order from and pay at, then you get a ticket that you hand to the kitchen staff, who make your meal. They have been doing this for a long time.