When I was in college I used to be part of a program where international students visit Japanese schools and tell the kids about their home countries. Cultural exchange, that kind of thing.
Once I was talking about how schools in Brazil are different from schools in Japan, and after talking about uniforms I was gonna talk about how the timetable is very different, because we usually only have classes for half of the day, but with much less breaks and classes starting way earlier than Japan.
It was not really a vocabulary mistake, because I was sure how both words were spelled and supposed to be pronounced, but it seems my accent combined with the fast speech needed to finish the class in time made じかん（時間） sound like ちかん（痴漢）to the kids.
Their faces after hearing ブラジルの学校の時間（痴漢？）も日本とすごい違います were priceless.
I went to Japan over the Christmas/New Year break. It’s my fourth time going, but my first time since I really started learning Japanese (last time I visited was late 2016 and I knew basic vocab, Kana, maybe ~30 Kanji, and was fairly limited to ~ありますか？、 ～をください、ETC)
I went to rent a bike in Kyoto and my travel buddy asked me to ask if they had lights on them and I forgot the word 電灯 and didn’t use the word ランプ (for some reason), instead I used 電気, so of course, the very helpful staff member began to show us the range of e-bikes.
I kinda just went with it and we both picked regular bikes, but he was very helpful.
(They had automatic lights by the way! They turned on as soon as it was dark.)
In addition, I accidentally said 二つ名 instead of 二名 at the very start of the holiday, she corrected me and I never made the mistake again.
I hopped over the pond to live with my partner before we moved back to where we live now.
The day after I first arrived in Japan upon the move there, I went to buy some food. I had no idea I needed to bring my own bag and when the checkout person finished the order, I thought I didn’t get one because maybe she thought I drove. So I said, “Watashi wa koko ni aruiteimashita!” while smiling and pumping my arms and walking in place. A very uncomfortable silence followed. Finally, she picked up my basket, carried it to the side, put it down, and told me to have a good day.
The next time my soul left my body in the grocery store was when I DID ask for a bag… but I said ofukuro kudasai instead of fukuro kudasai. …So I basically asked for a mother. This is fine.
I was having dinner with my family and they asked me if I liked the sushi they bought. I smiled and loudly said in excitement, “Hai!!! Sushi ga daisuke!!” It was emphasized as such. And you know, it wouldn’t have been so bad, except a person literally NAMED Daisuke was sitting with us.
Also, shout out to that one time I walked into a bar and asked for umeshu. The bartender laughed at me.
This isn’t my mistake but I was there for it and it was golden.
So I’m on an academic trip to Japan with a bunch of other students and we’re doing stuff like visiting Japanese middle and high schools. We get to this one school where they decide to host like a reception and stuff before we sit in on some classes. So we’re all hanging out in the music room, eating snacks and drinking from water bottles that the school gave us. One girl is struggling to open her water bottle and when she finally gets the cap off, it jerks and she spills some on the table. She doesn’t know how to speak any Japanese to ask for something to clean it up so another girl at the table volunteers.
With absolute confidence, she walks up to the vice principle, who was overseeing all of us, and asks, すみませんが、ナプキンありませんか？
The poor, embarrassed, middle aged man took her all the way to the nurse’s office before she realized the miscommunication.
I’m not sure I would count that as a mistake, even if it turned into an embarrassing situation. The first definition of ナプキン you’ll find in a dictionary is for table napkins, and the feminine product is second.
Sure, in common usage, the second definition is more often used by Japanese people, but it’s the man who should be embarrassed for not being able to grasp the context.
Maybe not a mistake, though since then I’ve always been careful to use alternative words just to avoid confusion altogether.
To be fair to the vice principal, even though he was overseeing us, it was a pretty large group and I don’t think he saw or knew about the spilled water. He didn’t have the necessary context there.
The only mistake I specifically remember (which was really nothing but still haunts me to this day), was in my second-year Japanese class, on one of the first days, my teacher was having trouble parsing my last name on the roll sheet (it’s a double-barrel, but for simplicity I only ever use the second part, Taylor), and to make things easier I told her, being so used to appending honorifics to everyone’s name, 「テーラーさんでいいです。」
She never even said anything about it but I could see the flicker on her face and I immediately sunk into the floor.
Did I already post about the time I got nervous and tried to use Japanese with a Korean teacher?
Also, there was a place selling vegetables. There was a japanese woman selling them. Foreigners are rare where I live. Once I spent about a year practicing a line “果物はありませんか？” .
Last year I decided to go for it and use the line. I kindda introduced myself, ask her name, forget about it in the spot. Use 台詞 at some point. Struggle to find japanese words. Going back to English. Ask the question I practiced for so long and then I left without buying anything.
I’m gonna feel embarrassed for the rest of my life.
During my time in college, I think I was trying to write woman. I rationalized that if 女の人 was woman and 男の人 was man, and 人 was person, then it should just be less formal to drop the 人. I can’t remember if I just wrote 女 or what, but my 先生 (who was this sweet old lady I dearly loved and wanted to do well for) called me to her office to discuss my latest homework and was scandalized because apparently I wrote bi*ch LOL. She was so embarrassed to explain it to me and wanted to know where I heard it. Nowhere, I just accidentally made it up, hah. I wanted to crawl under the table and die.
i didn’t even know the meaning of やらせて at the time it some how perfectly came out of my mouth lol
my manager and colleague couldn’t contain the laughter, luckily for me they were both the coolest Japanese people i have ever known with their sense of humour, hilarious.
took them about 3 days before they told me the meaning after saying “ooh yes please” at every encounter lol
I just remembered this stupid mistake I made a while back. Talking with my friend who studied abroad in Japan for a year.
Friend: Ooh, I love your Totoro keychain, where did you get it?
Me: At どんぶり
Friend: Uh…where?
Me: どんぶり, y’know the Ghibli chain store.
Friend: You mean どんぐり?
Me: Nah, I’m pretty sure it’s どんぶり。
I was insistent.
Well guess which one means 団栗 (Acorn) and which means 丼 (Rice bowl.)…
I’m currently on the JET Program. Maybe slightly less than a year ago, when I’d been in the country for around six months, I tried to tell another teacher that their observation class was interesting (which, since it was an art class and kids were presenting their works and commenting on others, it genuinely was).
I meant to say, “I didn’t understand everything, but it was interesting.” My intended wording was something already kind-of awkward, but passable, like “全部はわからなかったけど…,” but when I actually said it, I accidentally replaced the けど with ので. I essentially wound up telling the guy his class was interesting because I couldn’t completely understand it.
I assume/hope he figured out it was a flub and forgave me, because at the time attempting a full explanation on top of that seemed like more headaches than it was worth.
I didn’t rescan the thread just now to see if I’d already posted it, but I also accidentally once told a class vampires were weak to “muscle” rather than garlic.
Was reading something written by my classmate and discussing it with the instructor when I was asked if I knew Sakura Momoko. I said yeah, but she’s not here anymore then proceeded to say “テレビで葬式をしました” instead of 見ました. giant facepalm
