So, in the course of my life I have dropped some ugly ones.
A 20 something female student when I was teaching eikaiwa went to a meeting party (go-kon in Japanese). So the next week I asked her if she enjoyed her “go-kan”. She stared at me, her friend burst out laughing. I repeated, “Did you enjoy your go-kan? Did you meet any nice guys?” The laughter continued as I kept digging myself deeper and deeper into the shit.
Finally checked my dictionary. “Go-kon” means party. “Go-kan” means sexual assault…..
Thankfully they didn’t have me fired.
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I once gushed to my female Japanese classmates about the musculature of the national rugby team (All Blacks, woop woop). They seemed very unimpressed/disturbed/confused…turns out I was saying にんにく (ninniku, garlic) instead of 筋肉(kinniku, muscles)…
I’ve also asked a grade three class to take out their erotic pencils (ero-enpitsu instead of iro-enpitsu). Luckily the kids didn’t hear/register, but the homeroom teacher (who I was good friends with outside of school) had to leave the class because she was in near hysterics.
When I was an ALT I was eating lunch with some students who had just come back from their school trip, so I asked them how their shugaku ryokou (school trip) was, and they all just kind of looked at me, and one very kind girl politely repeated what I had said, which was shinkon ryokou (honeymoon). They all started laughing once I did.
I remember one time I spelt 静的構造解析 as 性的構造解析 (static structural analysis vs sexual structural analysis). Thankfully one of my colleagues caught the mistake before it ended up in front of a customer.
Over lunch eating udon told the company owners wife that getting together the kintama (testicles) for a bank loan was difficult.
Meant atamakin (deposit).
rest of the table in the cafeteria was spluttering food back into their bowls.
I (f) was working with a vice principal who spoke fluent English. After lunch one afternoon, he said to me: “wow, I’m so hard!” I stared at him and said “oh, really?” And he said “yeah, we had so many potatoes in the soup for lunch, my stomach is so hard!” I said “oh. Um… The Japanese word ハード doesn’t mean the same in English…” After explaining, he turned bright red and said “omg, I just sexually harrased you”. It was hilarious.
I once told a group of friends we were great homodachi’s. Of course, I meant tomodachi.
Flirting with a girl and I accidentally said ‘目がきらい’ instead of ‘目がきれい’. Whoops.
My worst was like my 2nd week in Japan. I was working on memorizing all the common phrases. I had just finished some classes at a hoikuen and was signing out in the teachers’ room, preparing to leave.
One of the teachers said お疲れさま and I got flustered and bowed while saying ごちそうさまでした. Must have been like 15 teachers in the room cry-laughing. Didn’t live that one down for a long time. Good unintentional icebreaker for sure, lol.
Staying at my in-law’s place. I want to get up a bit early, and usually my MIL is the earliest riser of them all. So I bust out my crazy jozu Nihongo and proudly ask her:
“Oka-san, shichi-ji ni okashite kudasai”
Wife looks mortified, MIL puzzled, FIL grins. So I try again. Same result.
Wife takes me aside and says, “okOshite, okOshite”… not “okashite”.
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“Okoshite” means wake me up.
“Okashite” means invade or assault me.
Another night on the cold side of the futon….
OK, so I guess I’m probably not the only person to have asked for うんこ instead of あんこ back when they were a beginner…..
I asked the staff at a restaurant for “s*aru* kudasai!” instead of *sara*.
Boss asked me to add these mail address (宛先 – atesaki), I replies that these chicken wings (手羽先 – tebasaki)are too long, can we cut it down.
onaka oppai
I tried to tell my wife that I had just eaten anko at her beautiful cousin’s house, but mixed bean and bean paste together and told her very loudly in the middle of a crowded station that I had just eaten her cousin’s m-anko…
I asked a group of my JHS boys “o-benki desu ka?” and they literally lied on the floor laughing.
[for those who don’t know – benki = toilet; so I just asked them “Hi! Are you toilets?”]
It’s not one specific mixup or line, but I confidently walked into the Shimogyo-ku fire department in Kyoto and tried to have my new address registered.
I could read “something something ward office” or something similar on google maps and I was confident this was the place. I walked in and saw firetrucks everywhere, but I was like “well maybe Japanese people keep their firetrucks on the ground floor of city hall”. Took the stairs up and walked into an open-plan office and confidently told the first person to look at me (very puzzled) that I was here to register an address change.
They told me they were the fire department. I was like “Shoubouhonbu… Shoubouhonbu… I *know* I’ve heard that Shoubou somewhere before… what is he trying to tell me… oh well maybe I didn’t make myself clear” and repeated, multiple times, that I would like to register an address change. It took like 10 minutes for them to compliment me out the door and on the way back past the firetrucks I remembered that Shoubousha was firefighter.
I wouldn’t be surprised if the Shimogyo-ku firefighters still talk about that one time a 20 year old white guy confidently walked into their office waving his Zairyuu card and adamantly demanded his new address be registered.
Was on a date with a cool girl several years ago, and I didn’t speak much Japanese then. Was drinking with a Japanese buddy the night before and took a memo of some Nihongo I could bust out.
At the end of the date, walked her to the station and meant to tell her “また会いたい!” Buuuttt, I took the memo wrong, and called out “股いたい！”, meaning “my dick hurts!”
Didn’t see her too much after that haha
I knew this guy who offered his seat to a pregnant woman by repeatedly saying “sawatte kudasai!” (Please touch (me)!)
Early in my studies I intuited from watching manzai comedians on TV that “omae” means “you”.
So I started calling everyone at work “omae” for a day until I was politely corrected.
I was struggling to get out of the English teaching business, so a friend of mine lined me up with an interview at a pretty big international advertising agency. Naturally, me being somewhat of a wastrel at the time rolled into the interview with zero idea about the company or how the business works.
Most of the interview was conducted in English, but near to the end (I’m sure to their delight) one of the Japanese colleagues asked me if I had anything to close say in Japanese to close the interview.
I thought I was saying I had appreciation to them for the interview. “kansha”
I was actually offering to cum on their faces. “Gansha”
I didn’t get the job.
Working in Eikaiwa, I’m only paid for the lessons I teach, not a reliable monthly salary.
When I explained this in Japanese, I meant to say that my company does not give me kyuuryou (salary), but instead I said that my company does not give me kyouryuu (dinosaurs).
In my defense, that is also true.
Oh yeah, and then there was the time I thought I asked my mother-in-law if she was a housewife (shufu), when in fact I asked her if she is a prostitute (shoufu).
That was a giggle.
On more than one occasion, I have tried to express that there are a lot of something. In such cases I’ll go to say either
Xがおおい
Or
Xがいっぱい
I’ve accidentally said Xがおっぱい a few times since my brain won’t make up its mind which to say in time
Watched a band. Was asked if I enjoyed it. I wanted to set ‘Yes, it was interesting!’ Instead I said ‘Yes, I’ve wet myself!’
I kept saying 入院 instead of 入学 when talking about my childhood and growing up and kept wondering why everyone looked so glum when I did.
I still recall when I was looking for an oven-safe dish for baking pies. I asked the (female) store clerk if she could help me find a “pie pan”. She turned bright red, and I didn’t immediately understand why. I repeated it several times even, just in case she misheard….
Guy: Why are you in Fukuoka?
Me: In law’s shogai (disability) party!
I meant to say shogatsu (new years) party.
Back in my ALT days, my ability to understand Japanese was around N4, but my speaking was awful. Even when I clearly understood what was being asked, I would panic and end up babbling nonsense like a deer in headlights.
The Japanese teachers at the school realized pretty quickly that I couldn’t hold even a small talk conversation about the seasons changing, and so never really attempted to talk to me after the first week. I didn’t blame them at all, though I did wish I could talk to them more.
One day I had brought in Fujiyama cookies as omiyage for the office from a trip. That same evening, the math teacher who didn’t speak a word of english was the last one left in the office with me. He very bravely started talking to me while tidying up his desk. I figured out that he was talking about his infant daughter who had a fever and that he was going to be taking care of her when he got home.
Understanding his story, my brain rolled the dice of acceptable responses, but couldn’t remember how to translate “I’m sorry to hear that” or “I hope she feels better soon.”
Instead, there was a pause while I panicked, then I pointed at the omiyage cookies and said brilliantly, 「クッキー、赤ちゃんにあげる。」
Another pause as he stared at me blankly before laughing and saying she doesn’t have teeth yet so she can’t eat cookies.
At a total loss, also somehow blanking on obvious N5 vocab like 残念 or 大変, all I came out with was a simple: 「悲しい。」
I don’t remember him saying anything after that. I think we just exchanged awkward eye contact as I shuffled away to go home. Then my brain short circuited as I remembered someone telling me that お疲れ様でした is rude to say to your superiors, but さようなら means farewell, (somehow 失礼します evaded me) so then I settled on また明日, but I was taking a holiday the next day, so instead I just said: 「また！」and ran out the door without looking back.
I guess it’s not as bad as these other stories but i still look back on that interaction and cringe. I can only hope that he and his wife had a good laugh about it when he got home. Probably the last time he’ll ever bother making small talk with the ALT.
I’d been in the country side for a year and was homesick for some good ol’ American pancakes. One of my mother’s friends was a flight attendant and she had her hand deliver me a box of aunt Jemima pancake mix. I was so stoked. I cooked them up perfectly, golden brown beauties only to discover I had no syrup!
Not a problem, the ministop was right next door, I could be back before they even got cold. I rushed to the mini stop, grabbed that delicious bottle of sweet maple syrup and absolutely doused my pancakes in them.
Chomp!
!!!!!
Nooooo wtf this isn’t syrup!?!
That was the day I learned to read ごま油
In my early days in Japan and in Japanese language learning I was at my work trying to ask for my payslip. Didn’t know the word for payslip in Japanese. Decided to just use words that I do know and say ‘salary paper’ and hope that they would know what I meant. Accidentally mixed up dinosaur (恐竜 きょうりゅう kyoryu) and salary (給料 きゅうりょうkyuryo) and asked for my dinosaur paper instead. The woman I was talking to kept a straight face, everyone behind her laughed, I realised what I had said and then we all laughed together. Years later they would bring it up as a joke sometimes and we would all laugh about it, helped me get closer to them!
Not my mistake, but it involved me tangentially. Back when I was teaching, I called in sick one day. My manager sent an email out saying I was sick, but typed “senshi” instead of “sensei”. So basically, no class today because the teacher went off to war and died.
A coworker once sent an email with a typo. Unfortunately I don’t remember the exact word switch, but the typo implied that he wasn’t staying home all day because he was sick, he was staying home because he was masturbating.
A friend of mine had some floating candles on top of the gas heater. She went to add some water to them, spilled some over. Must have run some wax or something down into the heater because flames came shooting out. She ran outside, where a couple of guys were doing some work, to get help. But instead of saying “kaji” for fire, she said just kept repeating the word “kaki” (persimmon). The guys thought she was offering them some fruit, and getting insistent about it, kept saying “No, we’re fine”. Finally she got them inside, they were doing the whole “thank you for inviting us in” stuff until they entered the room off the genkan, then panic ensued as the fire was now halfway up the wall. The building survived, but the room was gutted.
Another friend once asked for dessert with some “unko” instead of “anko” on it. Yes, I’d like some ice cream (or whatever it was) with poop in place of bean paste.
I heard someone tell a story of back when they were teaching and first learning Japanese. They learned that “urusai” means “loud”. So he’d go up to kids at school and start a basic conversation, then when the shy kid spoke in a tiny voice, he’d say “urusai” thinking he was encouraging them to speak louder. But he didn’t understand the connotation of the word, the way it’s used, he was really telling them “Shut up, you’re too noisy”.
I’ve made my own share of mistakes in Japanese, but not to that extreme. It’s not as dramatic or funny of a story when I got my words crossed and asked for “black and white” (shiro kuro) instead of the salt & pepper mix (shio koshio).