Years ago, someone in Japan coined a wonderfully succinct slogan for a safety campaign against drunk driving that went: 飲むなら乗るな、乗るなら飲むな (Nomu nara noru na, noru nara nomu na). It corresponded nearly perfectly to the American English slogan "If you drink, don't drive; if you drive, don't drink" — and had the additional advantage of being difficult enough to double as an impromptu sobriety test.

Most languages, Japanese included, have a repertoire of catchy and useful phrases that are easily memorized. Knowing them boosts a foreign learner's self-confidence and helps them develop fluency, by making Japanese listeners realize the speaker has a good working grasp of the native lingo.

Japan Times reader Tatsuki Shimizu of Aoyama Gakuin University recently wrote in asking us to introduce the expression 当たり前 (atari-mae), which means "That's obvious," "of course" or "naturally."