Ah yes, Japanese, the language of great culture, deep meaning and infectiously cute cartoons. Like much like our language, english, Japanese has a few (a lot) of words that sound the same, but have different meanings, and are also somtimes not spelled the same, they are homophones. Here are a few examples (this has been extended to include pharases. Keep in mind that the kanji are all different, and some may be imported words in most cases):

Hana - flower
Hana - nose
Seishi wo kakeru - to stake one's life
Seishi wo kakeru - to spray sperm on somthing
Chizu - map
Chiizu - cheeze