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Theoretically, all Japanese are taught in school to write their own names in Roman letters.
In practice, every Japanese uses Roman letters their own way.
That's only natural. Ask some English people you know to spell "four score and seven years ago" with Japanese letters. Most of then don't know Japanese letters at all, and each those who do will spell their way. Japanese letters weren't made to spell English, and that's it.
Of course, English letters weren't made to spell Japanese either.
Whenever you get some Japanese to write down some Japanese words for you, they will automatically assume that you don't like kana and that they are expected to use English letters to write the Japanese word. DON'T ALLOW THEM TO DO THAT. First, you'll get lots of mispellings. Second, you will be unable to convert the English letters back to Japanese letters, so you'll be unable to look up the words later in your favourite dictionary.
Instead, ask them to use kana. Usually you will need to be somehow insistent to get them to write kana for you. But most of them will not make any mispelling when they write in their own alphabet, and that means you will be able to look up the words later. If you don't know kana yet, don't worry. You can look up the letters in a kana conversion table. I'm sure you already have two dozen of those at home, and if you don't, google for them.
set phrasesHow to Read Japanese Mangawhen should kanji be used?
Copyright (c) 2003-2008
Jordi Mas Trullenque.
email: jordimastrullenque at gmail dot com
http://purl.oclc.org/NET/manga/roomaji.en.html
Last revised: 2008-10-08