If you like daily casual browser-based games and want to make use of the Skinner box effect to get something useful and rewarding for a change, check out Memrise, in which you have to keep your gardens growing by learning languages. Right now I'm using it to brush up on Français and 日本語, and they also have plenty of other courses available too (both languages and other everyday things).
I'm on there as plaidfluff if you want to exercise the social network aspect of it for whatever reason.
The Japanese word for "food" is たべもの (食べ物), which comes from 食べる(eat) ＋ 物(thing); that is, it literally means "edible thing." Similarly, the word for "drink" (the noun) is のみもの (飲み物); 飲む is the verb "to drink," thus, "drinkable thing."
The Japanese word for "fruit" is くだもの (果物), which comes from 果(reward) + 物(thing).
The Japanese word ものがたり (物語) means "legend" or "tale." (This word might be familiar as part of 洞窟物語, the original Japanese name of Cave Story.) It breaks down into 物(thing) + 語(language/speech).
In Japanese, you generally don't "have" something; rather, that something exists, and that implies that you have it. For example, to say that your Suica (transit pass) has 100¥ on it, you say:
わたしのスイカの１００円わあります
which can translate to a number of different things (based on context) but basically means "the 100 yen on my Suica exist."
Similarly, when asking for an English-language menu, one (fairly verbose and overly-polite) way to phrase it is:
あなたのエイゴでメニュのがありますか
which translates (more or less) to: "Does your menu of English language exist?" although a more common way to request one is simply:
エイゴでメニュおねがいします
meaning "Menu in English, thanks."
(Although from recent experience, most restaurants don't have an English-language menu, and those which do are insultingly adapted for American tastes, such as an otherwise-classy ramen shop in Ginza whose エイゴでメニュ listed chicken wings and hot dogs...)
The Japanese phrase for "the door is locked" is ドアがロックされて. The word for "door" (ドア) is a katakana transliteration from English ("doa"). "Locked" (ロックされて) is a hybrid of the katakana ロック ("rokku") and the hiragana されて ("sa rete"). This is apparently a bit of a transliterative pun, as ロック on its own can also mean "rock" (as in ロックマン, the Japanese name for Mega Man).
(It should of course be noted that in this case "rock" is as in music; the Japanese word for rock as in a large mass of stone is 岩, pronounced "iwa.")
n.: Detergent intended for the washing of fabrics or similar, in liquid form
In English, you can call someone by their name, or you can call them on their phone. Surprisingly enough, in Spanish, the verb "llamar" also means both things.
On the subject of words that are surprisingly directly translated, the English word "corn dog" becomes "perro de maiz," which is refreshingly literal.
In English, sweet and sour are considered to be opposites of each other, although there isn't any particular physiological reason for that. (Combining the two flavors doesn't cancel them out; instead they really complement each other, miracle fruit aside.)
In Japanese, sweet (amai) and salty (shiokarai) are considered to be opposites. This seems every bit as valid, really.
Apologies are always difficult.
In Spanish, you say "lo siento," which literally means, "I feel it." (To feel as in emotions, not as in touch. As an aside, to feel as in touch is "tocar," which is also the verb used for playing a musical instrument, as opposed to playing a game, which is "juegar.")
In Japanese there are a number of ways to say it. I had learned to say "gomen nasai" from watching anime, and when I went to Japan on business I used it to apologize to a waitress for not knowing Japanese when we were having translation issues. She laughed rather a lot at that, and got quite embarrassed. Later I learned that in Japanese there are two common ways of apologizing; first, there is the formal one you use with strangers, "sumimasen" (which is also used for "excuse me," and which literally translates as the negative form of "to get away with/to settle" in some weird twist of idiomatic logic that I can't wrap my head around). Then there is "gomen nasai" (which doesn't seem to have a literal translation into English but roughly means "please forgive me"), the form that you use for family members, close acquaintences, and so on. So basically I had apologized to the waitress as if she were my sister or girlfriend. (I suspect she was just more surprised to hear some Japanese from me out of the blue like that, though.)
While we're at it, how about some polite ways of asking for a favor? In Spanish, it's "por favor" ("for a favor," go figure). Japanese has a few different ways of doing it based on context and so on, but the most common I've seen are "kudasai" and "onegaishimasu," verb forms which kinda-sorta mean "I request this of you," which can refer to a noun ("mizu o kudasai" - "water, please") or to a verb ("mizu o nonde onegaishimasu" - "please drink this water;" "nonde" is the -te form of "nomimasu," the -te form being how you chain multiple verbs together). Then in Finnish, you use "on hyvä" (pronounced "ohn HYEW-vah") which just means, "it is good."
The Japanese verb for "drink" is のみます (nomimasu). The Japanese verb for "eat" is たべます (tabemasu). For some reason these both make perfect sense to me.
Incidentally, in Japanese, you normally drink soup (suupo o nomimasu), although as I understand it, this is after you eat the noodles in it (ramen/udon o tabemasu).
In English, possession is called out as a specific conjugation of a noun; "Fred's sandwich," "mens' clothing," "a butcher's knife," and pronouns have specific possessive forms, such as in "my cat." In many other languages, however, a possessive is often a specific form of a noun-formed adjective.
In Japanese, for example, you'd say, "Nikuya no naifu," "Fred-san no sandoitchi," "watashi no neko," and so on ("the knife of a butcher," "the sandwich of Fred," "the cat of me"). It's the same way that you'd form an adjective from a noun; "taiyō no iro" is the color of the sun. (In some cases the "no" can be left out, though; for example, one word for grey is "nezumi-iro" which literally means "mouse-colored.")
Spanish uses pretty much the same construct for possession by a noun; "chuchillo de carniceria" and "sándwich de Fred," for example. However, pronouns do have possessive forms; "mi gato," "sus zapatos," and so on. (One interesting twist with Spanish possessive pronouns is that they have two numbers associated with them — one for the subject, and one for the object. "Mis" is the first-person singular possession of a plural object, e.g. "mis zapatos" for "my shoes," whereas "nuestro" is the first-person plural possession of a singular object, e.g. "nuestro gato" for "our cat." The first-plural-person possessive pronouns also have to have gender agreement with the object; "nuestras camisas" for "our shirts.")
Of course, in English, it makes perfect sense to use these other languages' constructs, even if it usually sounds a bit more cumbersome. However, noun-as-adjective possession still makes sense sometimes; "the scent of a woman" can sound fairly romantic in the right context, whereas there aren't many times that "a woman's scent" wouldn't be just plain creepy.
