Reinventing yourself abroad is harder when you bring yourself along.

In 1985, Matthew Ranger arrives in Tokyo with bleached hair, a fake British accent, a Walkman, and the belief that a new continent can make him a new person. 

But the friend he followed across the Pacific has vanished, leaving him broke and stranded. 

He lands a job writing English user manuals he suspects nobody will read, crashes embassy parties, gets drawn into other people’s family dramas, and becomes complicit in his roommate’s scheme to conquer Japan with pizza. 

Matthew fabricates a past to outrun a childhood he needed to escape, not explain. Armed with a wry remark for everything, he discovers that some things, including a Hiroshima survivor’s memories, resist humour. 

When a charming stranger with a yakuza father takes an interest in him, Matthew must decide whether being himself is worth the risks. 

Gaijin Pizza House is a comic novel about invented identities and the terrifying possibility that someone wants you anyway.