When I learned you don’t generally use ます style in writing, but だたい/であるたい instead. Mind blown. Keep learning plain form everyone!
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Speaking of family names, it always amused me the fact that Bridgestone is named after its founder, 石橋. When a friend told me this, it kinda blew my mind; it’s pure genius! A really simple, elegant and effective company name!
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I’m just a beginner so this is a silly one, but I ordered the book Chi’s Sweet Home and it arrived the other day, and I started putting text from the front cover into Google Translate to see what it says, including an ad for the animated show. The bit that says こねこのちー took me by surprise because I already knew that こ means child, ねこ means cat, and the construction “[thing] の [name]” means “a thing called name,” so putting it all together as “a kitten [child cat] named Chi” makes perfect sense!
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For me it was when I learned that 北海道 meant North Sea Road. I recently visited the hot springs in Hokkaido so this helped me remember it more.
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From watching a drama recently:
- that 名字 can also be written as 苗字
From skimming A Dictionary of Japanese Particles:
- that い in the sentence-final だい of male speech (such as 「何だい？」) could be considered as adding a い to the だ copula, as opposed to considering だい together as a separate particle
From skimming a Handbook of Modern Japanese Grammar:
- that な-adjectives are also known as copular nouns or adjectival nouns, and that な is also a copula (more on this at grammar - Are な and だ both copula verbs? - Japanese Language Stack Exchange)
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When i learned… 犬 Which is the Kanji for dog And the Kun’yomi for 犬 is いぬ… 
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On my current level I just got to 柴犬 (しばいぬ) ^^
Life Goal Complete!
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also … 犬夜叉 for obvious reasons.
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The Outerbridge Crossing in New York is named after a guy whose last name was literally “Outerbridge”
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A shame he didn’t name it Sotobashi…
Btw, there is also Alter Bridge, but I don’t think it was named after anyone… =p
That the “-て” form has no inherent meaning as a command/request, and that any usage as such is simply a contraction.
Game-changer.
I went through a Japanese minor and a decent amount of N3 study before that one hit me.
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My biggest was when I found that emoji is NOT an odd short version of Emotion icon, but borrowed directly from Japanese and means (literally) image writing letter
Doesn’t have to be emotional I guess, doesn’t have to be a face! No, that would be kaomoji! (face writing letter =P )
I just can’t believe I didn’t realize till now… (well, not long ago when I got it as vocab on WK 
)
Also, Kykkeliky (Norwegian rooster )
Voff (dog)
Miao (cat)
I looked up a sound alike word in a Chinese dictionary once, and they had a version of miao that meant temple (the i had a different dot on top to show some difference in pronunciation though) Cats are holy confirmed
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北海道 Hokkaido is my favorite place name besides 青森 (Aomori). I was quite pleased to learn all the kanji for both of them here!
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I’ve had many, maybe not mindblowing, but certainly big “AHA” moments.
One of the more recent ones, was the word brazier 火鉢, literally meaning fire bowl. I was thinking, wth is a brazier?! Then, I got to the reading, hibachi, and thought omg, I have a hibachi in my backyard, I’ve just always called it a hibachi.
Interestingly, after doing slightly more research, what we commonly call a hibachi (at least where I live) is actually closer to a shichirin (七輪). From now on, I’m going to be a little torn anytime someone uses the word hibachi =P
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… I was like um… er… what, you have one in your backyard?!! Something is a miss here…
Googles Oh, it is spelled brassiere, well, it sounds very similar, lol!!
Never heard of a brazier before, nor hibachi. Now I do, so will be prepared for when I get to it in… a year? Lol, if it was a recent one it will be a while =P
…name…you have my name in your name O_o
My real name is Zuno! <3 (primary name, not family name =) )
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The price we pay for knowledge 
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lol! that was actually my first thought too, when I saw the word. How is a fire bowl a bra? a bowl that holds “hot” stuff I guess?
There’s a big mix of culture where I’m from, so certain commonly used words are often from non-english origins.
a mostly unrelated story: I grew up knowing that “akamai” meant “smart” - always thinking it was a Japanese word. When I started learning Japanese, I ran into “あたまがいい” and after a couple hours of trying to figure out the difference between akamai and あたまがいい, realized that akamai is actually a Hawaiian word!
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A quick note on weekdays: while they are based on celestial bodies, and it may make sense based on the Latin weekdays, that isn’t going to help me, who does not know nor care for Latin, memorize them. It’s clearly great for those who know Latin and planet names, it just isn’t what gave me that “aha” moment.
That said, days of the week have been relatively difficult for me to memorize (hadn’t seen the Kanji yet). The weekday discussion in this thread actually got me to look at the kanji for them and BAM. Here’s what I saw:
Monday → Moon kanji → 月 = Kanji I know from here
Tuesday → Fire kanji → 火 = Kanji I know from here
Wednesday → Water kanji → 水 = Kanji I know from here
Thursday → Tree kanji → 木 = Kanji I know from here
Friday → Wealth / Gold kanji → 金 = Kanji I haven’t seen yet here (SOON), but I know the word for the color gold, so pulling out きん is simple enough.
Saturday → Soil kanji → 土 = Kanji I know from here
Sunday → Sun kanji → 日 = Kanji I know from here
The days end the same way after the first kanji with 曜日 (ようび), which is simple enough for me to brute-force memorize. The only thing left to do is remember the order. I assigned each day a color, leading to:
Black, Red, Blue, Green, Gold, Brown, White, similar to elements in RPGs (gold can be, like, wind, or something). I mean, the color thing likely wasn’t quite necessary, as it’s one step removed, but I did it anyway. It’s just Moon, Fire, Water, Tree, Gold, Soil, and Sun to me now, and I can at least recite the days by thinking about that list. Speed will come with time.
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I’ll have you know that I have officially told all three of my schools about this (I’m working in Japan), and legit no one had considered this, and I collected the proverbial panties of all who had dropped them after seeing this.
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Eh, it’s a stretch for all of the elements involved, that’s probably why no one considered it.