kujō
Starting the day by heading underground to the Kyoto Municipal Subway 京都市営地下鉄 and what has since become one of my most frequented stations, Kujō Station 九条駅, on the Karasuma Line 烏丸線.
At the time I knew nothing about Chinese characters in general, or Kanji 漢字 in Japan more specifically, so the pattern of the station names either side of Kyōto Station 京都駅 – Jūjō 十条, Kujō 九条, Gojō 五条, Shijō 四条 – meant nothing to me. I figured they might be station numbers and didn't think more about it.
Years later, thanks to having gained a Taiwanese boyfriend, lived in Taiwan and learnt some Chinese, it was funny to return to the city and immediately realise that assumption was wrong: the names aren't the station numbers, they're the names of the remaining numbered old city streets.
This situation now happens frequently, where the experiences of the intervening years – marrying that boyfriend, living in Taiwan for years and learning more and more characters – result in spontaneous enlightenment about the meaning of a word or name (sometimes even an English word). It's both strange and satisfying, and it makes you think differently.