I have heard 酒が弱い vs. 酒が強い for lightweight and heavyweight drinker.
EDIT: Whoops…someone already pointed this out…my bad…
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I’ve done this too, but reversed! The wait staff looked so confused!
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That reminds me, lately I’ve got this hangup where instead of saying お先に 失礼します (o-saki ni shitsureishimasu) for “excuse me for leaving before you” my mouth wants to say おさけに 失礼します which probably sounds like I’m excusing myself to go drink liquor. (As if.) So every time I need to pause for a few seconds to avoid making this mistake, which probably looks weird as I get up and pause before finally remember the script before I leave. It’s become like a ridiculous subconscious rebellious reflex… I didn’t have this reflex three months ago, and I’ve never been in the habit of jokingly mangling this phrase, so I’m a little perplexed.
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I’ve caught myself calling the popular hangover cure ウコンの力 “ウンコの力”
I teach too many children…
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google search turns up ウコンの力, is that what you meant? EIther way I’ve never heard of it (or the power of poop)
Ah yes, that’s what I meant. Fixed.
Not me, but one of my English teacher friends here jumbled up きれい and きらい. So she spent the best part of a year loudly exclaiming how much she hated anything pretty.
Oh, I just realised I have another!
Another friend of mine was at the driving centre, handing over his documents to convert his International Driver’s Permit to a Japanese Driver’s License. He was feeling pretty confident about his Japanese and what he meant to say was “ここにアメリカの免許があります” (Here is my American license).
Unfortunately, he swapped the word 免許 for a similar-sounding word referring to a certain female body part. It only dawned on him afterwards what he’d done.
Most of my own stories have just been awkward misunderstandings. Like when the news broke that the NZ prime minister was pregnant, some teachers at my school asked about it and I responded something along the lines of “Yes, it’s autumn in New Zealand right now”. 
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Oh god the schadenfreude here is too strong. Sorry everyone but I had to stop reading about 10 posts in because I was laughing way too conspicuously at work :I
I’ll contribute with something that’s not really a mis-pronunciation. Back when I was starting out I was about level 5 on WK and a couple of chapters into Genki. I talked to a friend who came back from Japan to visit with his Japanese partner. As we were walking we struck up a basic conversation after bragging about how many kanji I’d learned and that’s when I realised: oh my god just learning a bunch of kanji and words does not help you with speaking AT ALL. I spluttered はじ。。。はじミまして。。。私はさん。。。じゅうにです。。。
After a bit-too-long silence, my friend’s partner said something to him in Japanese, then relayed to me, “She says you really need to study hard.”
And from that moment on, I really fucking have.
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I’m level 5 now and I’ve never had a conversation in Japanese. Guess I still got to learn more vocabulary to speak in Japanese for now so I wouldn’t try that for a while. Besides that, have you finished genki I-II since then? How long did it take you to finish one of books?
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I recently said “I tried reading alcohol but didn’t like it” instead of “I tried drinking alcohol but didn’t like it.”
So, that.
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While talking with my boyfriend’s mother about an upcoming trip, I used the べん pronunciation for 便 instead of びん。She brightly smiled and absorbed my every word as I talked about the schedule of my poop.
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Have a nice movement.
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Once when I was at work (I worked at a preschool), I was called to the office and told we were going to SOMETHING SOMETHING とに行く but since I didn’t know that phrase, I heard 鶏肉.
We showed up at a hardware store and I started babbling on like an idiot about how we don’t sell fried chicken at hardware stores in America, where’s the chicken at, what kind will we get, etc.
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If you drink enough alcohol, you will be able to also read it…
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Back in the days I wanted to tell a japanese friend, that, among other words, I learned the word 土 on WaniKani. Ended up saying 膣. Quite unlucky.
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I rather like the way that word is pronounced so I found it really easy to memorise it.
My favorite mistake was telling my language partner that my teacher talked about Japanese culture occasionally since he lived in Japan for a year. Instead of saying 一年 I said 一日. I didn’t even realize it at first and he was laughing so hard.
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So I was in a bicycle store trying to order a bike, and through my very poor Japanese and much gesturing and pointing I had gotten from the store owner that it was in fact possible to order the bike I wanted. At this point, I am ready to do this transaction so naturally I ask how I can order it.
Except, instead of どやって or ～方 (how) I asked なぜ (why).
Just “why”, nothing else. Like, are you gonna help me out with this existential crisis or what?
He was really confused, so of course, I asked the exact same thing again. He thought maybe I was asking why about the price so he explained that he couldn’t give me a discount. At this point I realized that what I wanted to say was not getting across and that I might be being a bit rude, so I said 注文したい (I want to order it) instead, which apparently was much more clear, and business progressed.
I didn’t realize my mistake until I had left the store, at which point I was super embarrassed. My Japanese must have been really bad, because when I went back to pick up my bike they (bless them) had learned a quite a few English phrases so they could communicate to me.
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you mean どうやって right?
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Oh my god that last one is brilliant ! 