Is there a simpler way to say this? I found the following sentence in the dictionary 私は以前に彼女と会った事がない事を確信した。The translation given is "I was sure I had never seen her before". I am wondering if this could not also be expressed as follows? 私は以前に彼女と会わなかった事と確信した One of the things I am finding difficulty with is the Japanese tendency to (what I call) pad the sentence with seemingly unnecessary words! I laugh about this with my teacher of course, as in English, being as concise and to the point as possible is a virtue, whereas in Japanese a whole lot of extra words that don't actually do anything seems to be the ideal. While I completely accept that this is the Japanese way of doing things, my problem is that because I don't really understand it, i can't possibly hope to emulate it!