Bristol Papa. British, 62, from a city known for a bridge, a cider, and a man who won't show his face – I relate to one of those. I came to Nagoya for a couple of years in the nineties and forgot to leave.

Day job in finance-adjacent IT, which is the least interesting thing about me and possibly anyone. I somehow outlasted everyone I used to work with - finally wore them down! - and now find myself head of a Very Big Global Team. In and out of cover bands since Nagoya, where I spent the nineties working for an auto supplier. These days I play the occasional gig in Tokyo. My Japanese ability is good enough for people to actually start correcting me, which is how you know.

Somewhere along the way I found myself in the odd, occasionally lovely, frequently ridiculous world of papa-katsu – dinners with women young enough to explain the apps to me, in exchange for company and conversation and a bill I'd have paid anyway. This diary is what happens when a man of a certain age tries to understand a country he's lived in for a quarter century, through the eyes of people who weren't born when he arrived.

Names are changed. The awkwardness is not.