It's one of those weird persistent memories from French class. Like, I can't remember how to ask directions but I do know that the French idiom with the same meaning as "the cat's out of the bag" is, apparently, "the carrots are cooked". Although these aren't, so I guess this is quite a messy title...(!)
@cityhillsandsea Whew. It's not that I was clueless, you were being very cryptic! I took high school Spanish and when I first went to live in Germany, I would make up these sentences and questions that were predominantly Spanish with a German noun thrown in. ¿Dónde está el Bahnhof? Once I was with a Mexican opera singer who said he could ask directions for us (because he had been living in Germany for years at that point) and he walked up to someone and said ¿Bahnhof? and raised his eyebrows to match his uprising intonation -- and that was all he had to say before we were met with a barrage of German and fingers pointing towards the train station. Ah, languages. You must have a lot of Japanese stories.
@jyokota That mixing of languages is kind of a staple for gags with people I know. My personal fave is when something like "Hurry up, we're going to be late" will elicit a "Would you just chotto your mattes?"
