Maybe like 50% true. There's a lot of stuff in Japan that has English "subtitles" IRL because they get so much tourism these days, especially if you go places tourists go. That said there were still a couple of times where I went to a restaurant and the menu was only in handwritten Japanese. That's how I ended up trying whitebait for the first time!

As for google translate, I don't use it much simply because I've been studying the language for long enough that I don't usually need to. That said, as long as you're pointing it at something that is printed cleanly (not handwritten lol) it's usually good enough for travel. If it makes a mistake you can usually use the context in your human brain to figure that out.