I disagree it's an error.
I like to keep anonymous on the internet, but the character was 町 (chou vs machi)
That example and ones like it. Not in the same vein as "tomaato" vs "tomaeto" as it goes beyond mere accent.
False binary as it is indeed a question of degree. English has been very effective at absorbing masses of foreign language without its speakers even knowing it. Few of them will know whether a word is old germanic origin or an original English creation, or french/latin/greek/indian (e.g. bungalow/khaki etc) origin. Can use both "best" and "optimum" flexibly etc. The only side effect has been clumsy spelling and conjugation rules.
Japanese on the other hand prefers to take the foreign word, but simultaneously use yet another set of phonographs to let everyone know "this is a foreign word", and mangle it with little attempt to recreate the original pronunciation. Japanese are perfectly capable of pronouncing a stop, "ich ni san" "asakksa", but arrogantly won't do so when the foreign word requires it (shiito beruto). It would have taken a single diacritic (which they're no strangers to in kana) to indicate "don't release", and they'd be pronouncing that word twice as well.
Of course English fails to absorb tonal vocabulary for instance, but so too did Japanese, even when the country was just across the sea. And then they don't even mark tonal diacritics for their remaining 2 tones.
I know almost no English speaker who says "croissant" as croissant. They all say "kwasson" in faithful attempt to approximate the pronunciation. Yes, they'll draw the line at pronouncing foreign names like "van Gogh" naturally, but the English do at least get it as close as possible with "van goff".
The french & icelanders at least try to calque new foreign words to keep their language coherent. The Japanese have no interest in that. Why are they writing and saying PM2.5 and then don't even recognize 煤塵 when I show it them? Or knowing "guraidaa" instead of 滑翔機? And why can't they just write something like 席紐 for seat belt?
As I see it, using 4 different systems of writing, and 2 different whole systems of pronunciation, is dysfunction. Everyone else is trying to, and reaching fair success, in melding it all together.
Really I think Japan is in sore need of a leader of some sort. Ataturk drove through latin + diacritic based writing for his country because he saw it as best (I don't know what the equivalent would be for Japanese). The only person who could lead as an equivalent character I guess would be the Emperor, but he's completely disempowered now.
I want my turn!
And not to bump an old thread / make one unnecessarily.