you won't make yourself a name if you follow the rules

Dear Living Language book: y u lie to me? 'Cause I know for a fact that 'watashi' is not the equivalent of 'I' in English, because there are lots of first-person pronouns in Japanese and only one in English, and telling me that 'watashi' = 'I' flattens out a lot of the meaning entailed in using 'watashi' instead of 'boku' or 'ore' or whatever.

I realize lesson one may not be the place to get into these fine distinctions, but.

Also Japanese the Manga Way romaji uses macrons to indicate long vowels and Living Language romaji doubles vowels to indicate long vowels ("Tōkyō" vs "Tookyoo") and neither of those is how I've picked it up from fandom and this frustrates me. Also insert gripe about having to memorize kana, and about a lot of the writing being up-down right-left instead of left-right up-down. And I'm pretty sure this whole paragraph comes from a place of [something] supremacy (not sure if the something is 'white' or 'American' or 'European-origin' though), which only frustrates me more.

ETA: Oh. I figured out what irritates me so about having to learn kana. I have been reading since I was three, my parents tell me. I do not remember being three. As far as I'm concerned, I have always known how to read...and if I actually want to learn Japanese, I have to learn to read all over again with no idea how I accomplished this feat the first time.