The best word to describe the color green, is the word "blue". The best Japanese word, that is. Japanese word "Aoi" which translates to the English word "blue", was orginally used to describe things in Japanese that were green. For this reason, green apples are called "aoi ringo" in Japanese, which literally means "blue apple" when translated into English.
Interesting things like that come up in Japanese class, all the time. Like last week when I met a guy who had just spent 3 months in Japan working for the New Start Foundation, providing social services to "shut-ins".
"Shut-in", like "blue apple", doesn't really capture what the Japanese mean to say and what the non-speaker thinks they hear. When this guy said "shut-in", I thought of elderly people who can't get around like they use to, so you have to knock on their door to check on them. But he could tell, I wasn't getting it...I really had no idea.
Japan's shut-ins are not the elderly abandoned by others, they typically are the young people who have abandoned society. The best word in Enlish I could think of was "loser"; but, as my new friend explained, it was more complicated than that and more serious than it sounds.