And the thing is that Japanese is not a phonetically-complex language. It has just five vowels: a, i, u, e, o, which are pronounced the same as in Spanish or Italian. The consonants are more or less the same as in English. Why would anyone torture themselves with “ō-tay-ŭh-rye dō-kō dĕs-kă” when the romaji “otearai doko desu ka” is less confusing?
Beyond that, romaji is used all over the place in Japan and you don’t want to be standing on a train platform wondering if “Ikebukuro” is the same as “Ee kay boo koo row.” I just can’t imagine a use case for this kind of mangling.
