I confused ペラペラ (speaking fluently) and ペロペロ (licking). That male japanese acquaintance of mine was laughing so hard. 
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I made the mistake a few months ago of trying to use the word 人口 in a three-hint quiz to a group of elementary schoolers when I couldn’t think of anything else to prompt them to say “Social Studies” as they were learning school subjects.
Uh, don’t do that. Fun fact: Your thick American tongue is not yet skilled enough at Japanese to clearly distinguish between that word and other things it might sound like.
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OP’s “shameful” mistake is very normal and understandable. Lazy ones though, not so much. I had a 500lvl class entirely dedicated to reading and discussing the Tales of the Heike. And a guy who was also in 5th year Japanese language classes continued to pronounce “Heike” as “haiki” along with mispronouncing other words out of laziness. Drove me insane.
On another note. I’m constantly mixing up different words and languages. When I try to think of the Japanese word for something, I often can only think of the Korean. And sometimes when I’m speaking Korean I’ll use the Japanese word.
My worst language mistake though is sometimes in Korean I’m trying to say “how many years something” but instead end up counting bitches (according to my past Korean teacher) because I mix up the number systems. A bus driver recently asked me how long I’ve been here and I used the wrong number system, he understood what I meant and just said the correct way out loud but it was a shameful moment. Still mixing them up since 2011 
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I can’t figure out what word they thought you said…
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As a fellow denizen of a Japanese elementary school, my best guess would be ちんこ 
This has also happened to me when I was trying to say 地図（ちず), but every time the kids would be like ｢チーズ?!?｣. My intonation was probably off, but this also happened a few times when their homeroom teachers said the word so, I get the feeling kids will hear what they want to hear 
I’ve also had trouble convincing them that the English word for 韓国（かんこく）is pronounced ‘Korea’ and not ゴリラ.
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In the spirit of contributing to the original topic of this thread: Once, I greatly entertained a Japanese friend by referring to my あご (chin) as my アホ 
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Sorry to dig up such an old post, but it really bothers me. If this is wrong, then how can you say “I will go to Japan and eat ramen with John”, with John already being in Japan, i.e “I’ll got to Japan alone, and then I’ll meet John to eat ramen” ?
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Once I got annoyed with my roommate in Japan who turned the lights on every night and woke me up. So one night I angrily TRIED to say, “Can you please stop waking me up every night?” but unfortunately the word for wake up おこす is really similar to the word for rape おかす, and I ended up saying, “Can you please stop raping me every night!?” I have never seen anyone look so terrified and confused.
I have a couple other friends who have made this mistake, too. One friend apparently asked her Japanese husband to wake her up in an hour from her nap, and he never did. When she got mad at him for it, he got really freaked out and was like, “Why would you ask me to do that!?”
One fight later they figured it out.
Another friend was told by her boss at work that she looked sleepy. So she then messed up the two words and jokingly told him, “Haha I guess you’ll have to rape me then!” This ended up in a reaallyyyy awkward conversation on work appropriate jokes apparently.
Another word combo I mess up all the time is 滑り止め (backup) and 滑り台 (slide).
I was talking to a coworker about applying to university, and told him confidently that I was fine because I had plenty of 滑り台 picked out. He just looked at me for like ten seconds then said, "…滑り止め。”
そう。でした。ね。; u;
Some words are actually really important not to mess up, as it turns out.
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Imagine you don’t voice the “j” enough and don’t extend the vowel at the end of the word well enough. Now imagine you’re speaking to a bunch of eleven-year-old boys just waiting for a moment to indulge their potty humor.
Edit: @Snowflying was on the money.
Was @seanblue actually serious? I thought it was sarcasm. 
Not so shameful, more just awkward, was when I first used 先年 in a conversation (I rejoiced when WK removed it) to explain I’d once practiced martial arts and received blank stares for a few seconds before one teacher timidly asked me in English “a thousand years?” I wrote it down and realization came upon them.
To this day I haven’t bothered to figure out if there is a tone difference between 先年 and 千年, but regardless I figured it would be obvious that I formerly practiced martial arts rather than practicing martial arts for a thousand years, but I guess not. 
Since then I’ve relied more on my vocabulary bank and waiting to try out WaniKani words until I’ve researched them. 
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I also didn’t get what was being referred to. I guess because you have to get both halves of it wrong in significant ways (well, one is more significant than the other, but still it’s not just one mistake) to go from one to the other.
That’s why I couldn’t figure it out. I tried looking up じんこ and ちんこう. Also, I’m an outlier in that I don’t learn curses and other “inappropriate” words (for lack of a better term) when I first learn a language. I didn’t even do that with Spanish in highschool where virtually everyone looks up those kinds of words right away.
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I think it‘s not wrong to say what I said. In context, everybody will understand. My Japanese teacher didn‘t even notice until I asked her if there wasn‘t an alternative translation. If you want to say „I‘ll go to Japan alone and eat ramen with John in Japan“, my guess is that you could use the same sentence. Maybe you could say something like „ジョンと一緒にラーメンを食べます。" for clarity.
Maybe we should ask @Leebo about this…
P.S. It‘s very weird that you ask that just now. It just so happens that the very same “John” came to Japan yesterday. We haven‘t had ramen yet, though.
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If your question is just about how to avoid the situation where it sounds like you’re going to eat John and the ramen, then yeah, adding 一緒に solves that.
EDIT: Also I’m assuming you didn’t eat ramen yet because you are full from eating John.
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Thank you Leebo先生! I wasn‘t sure if the sentence works that way… What would be the natural way to say it? (Dumb question, sorry…)
Natural way to say the sentence that has 一緒に in it? I didn’t mean to make it sound like that was “merely” solving the problem but needing some tweaking to be natural. It’s natural as is.
If that’s what you were concerned about.
The sentence without 一緒に is grammatically fine for either meaning, including the nonsensical one, which is why it’s funny. You could emphasize the proper meaning with your voice/pacing in an actual conversation. Separating things with pauses is like putting commas in there, and it can clarify ambiguous stuff.
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And if you were to use 一緒に ? 日本に行って ジョンと一緒にらめんを食べます ?
See above… That makes it correct.
Oh right, thanks