The WHAT Room?

Well, after years of hearing funny cross-cultural-mix-up stories from my parents and their fellow missionaries, I finally have one of my own. It's not nearly as funny as my dad's "it's early" story from Brazil (if you know my dad and haven't heard that story, ask him about it), but this one is my very own, and I'm kind of proud of that. Last week, some very important guests were coming to visit our school. Students, teachers and administrators were cleaning furiously and madly making green tea, along with the many other preparations required when receiving visitors who will be judging your school based on the ten seconds they spend in each classroom.
I was in the teachers' room, and my kyoto sensei (vice-principal) came in and asked me to go to the kagi shitsu. At least that's what I thought he said. "Kagi" in Japanese is key, and I thought "that's strange, we don't really have a key ROOM, per se. But we do have a big wooden key BOARD--that must be what he means." So I walked across the teachers' room and stood right in front of the key board, dutifully awaiting further instructions. My kyoto sensei looked at me, tilted his head to one side, and basically communicated to me, non-verbally, that I was an idiot. He pointed in the direction of the neighboring room and said "the kaigi shitsu"? Oh yes, "kaigi," only one vowel away from from "kagi" means meeting. The meeting room. We definitely DO have one of those, and that does make a lot more sense. I smiled sheepishly and hurried to the meeting room, where I tried to make up for my embarassing moment by sweeping the floor with an extra measure of gusto. And now I, and hopefully you, will always remember the difference between those two similar, but very different, words.