Welcome to Nobutaka Mizuno's Web Site "Clichés.net".

It's regretted, however, that the overwhelming majority of contents are written in Japanese for the time being except few articles on my weblog, due to my inadequate English proficiency.

I hope online translation services such as "Google Translate" could be of some help. If you are French speaker, please visit also French Version .

Please do not hesitate to follow me on Twitter or send me your message via forum, or MSN messenger at nmtalks-at-hotmail.com.

After all, thank you very much for your interest in my site.

Sincerely,

Today, I would like to introduce a funny story on which I read in the paper, regarding a Japanese guy with poor English:

He is a government official who has been appointed as a staff of the United Nations. But, he is not confident at all about his English skills, and he decided to apply a rule: in order to deliver his opinion in the meetings, say simply "Yes" or "No".

He kept this rule strictly to carry off the difficult discussions, and 3 years passed by: it is time to back to Tokyo.
He was very happy to escape English, but his boss in UN called him to say:
"It is for the first time to meet a Japanese person who express his own opinion very clearly, which is most appreciated in our organization. Now, it would be grateful if you could extend your post 3 years more..."

He smiled at his boss, but his answer was very clear and simple, as usual,

"No."