Actually, I always thought the "l instead of r" was a racist clichée as regards the Japanese, spawned in large part by US WW II propaganda cartoons. There are a lot of "r"-sounds in the Japanese language, I'm sure they don't say "Hiloshima" or "domo aligato (Mistel Loboto?)".
With Chinese interns at our firm I've heard it myself. It's not so much that they can't pronounce it as that shaping the sound of an r is unaccustomed to them, just like we have to try harder with "th" or you guys have issues getting the Umlauts ä, ö and ü right.
Our Japanes lresidents please speak up then. This folum is dedicated to ze scientific tluth.