Must be wonderful having everyone in the continent of asia having a charged phone and cell reception in every restaurant. Us Americans are not so lucky.

A good number of problems solved elsewhere are routinely proclaimed as unsolvable in the U.S. Solutions are categorically rejected in the U.S. because implementation is somehow uniquely crappified. The worst form of American exceptionalism.

A lot of this is because things like Line and WeChat haven't take off here.

What are these restaurants that don't have the hostess give you menus? The lowest class ones have menus printed on the little table placemats, middle ones always have a pile of menus the host grabs from when seating you (and calls you Party of X, always), and the highest ones either arrange for wine first, or you're getting a menu from the server right as you're seated by the hostess.

I suppose there's some middle-ground "seat yourself" style ones but I can't recall any recently.