People ask me – well, one person asked me, and he was drunk – how you actually start. Not the philosophy, which is in Entry 0, and not the spreadsheet, which is in Entry 4. The rules. What a sixty-two-year-old with a bad back and a decent salary should know before he downloads an app with a heart in the logo.

So here they are. Learned, in most cases, by breaking them.

1. Know what you're looking for

Not which lane – that's next – but the shape of the thing. A series of short arrangements, or two or three that last? An age range you'd actually be comfortable sitting across from? A type, if you're honest about having one? An area of town you can get to on a weeknight without it becoming a project? None of these are shameful to have and all of them are useless if you haven't written them down, because the app will show you nine hundred profiles and every one of them will look like a good idea at eleven at night. The more precisely you can say what you want, the faster you'll recognise it – and, more usefully, the faster you'll recognise what it isn't.

A word on age, while we're here, for the men who arrive with a very specific number in mind. The youngest cohort on these apps – the ones still in university – are, in my experience, mostly a bit dull. Not their fault. They haven't done anything yet. They order what you order, they laugh where you pause, and by the second dinner you're carrying the whole evening on your back, which is not the arrangement of backs you had in mind. The women in their late twenties and early thirties have jobs, opinions, ex-boyfriends and a working knowledge of what they like. Plot hotness against fun and that's where the area under the curve is. Adjust the filter accordingly and thank me later.

2. Decide which lane you're in before you open the app

There are two kinds of arrangement and the apps are polite enough to name them. Kenzen is dinner and conversation and nothing else. Otona is the other thing. Most of the misery on these platforms comes from men who say one and mean the other, and from women who've learned to expect exactly that. Know your lane. Say your lane. Change lanes only by agreement and only once.

3. The profile is fiction. The numbers are not

Her self-introduction was written to be read by men like you. Ignore it. The app also shows you things she can't edit: reply rate, last login, how many times she's posted on the message board, how many reports she's collected. Read those first. A low reply rate isn't necessarily bad – it can mean she's fussy, which is what you want. Message board posts are a different matter. Zero posts tells you nothing; twenty posts tells you everything.

4. The opening message is not "hi"

"Hi", "cute profile" and "how are you" get the reply rate they deserve, which is none. She has four hundred of them. The advice you'll read elsewhere is to reference something from her profile, which is fine in theory and useless in practice, because the profile says "new here, I like food, tee hee, yoroshiku" and there is nothing to reference.

What actually works – by a distance, in my experience – is to put the whole trajectory in the first message, with numbers attached. Coffee, and what you'll hand over for it. Dinner, and what that pays. Where you'd like it to go after that, and on what terms. Polite, unhurried, no pressure on timing, but nothing left for her to guess at. It reads like an offer because it is one, and it does two things at once: it tells the ones who want that exactly what they're getting, and it tells the ones who don't to move along. The reply rate goes down. The quality of the replies goes up. That's the trade you want.

5. Coffee first. Always

The kaoawase is a 20-30-minute interview in which both parties are the candidate. Daytime, a café, somewhere near a station. You pay for the coffee and hand over a modest ocha-dai on the way out whether or not you ever want to see her again – it's her afternoon, and she turned up. Never skip this.

6. Confirm the terms before dinner, not after

You've already stated them in the first message. Between coffee and dinner you say them again – shorter, warmer, now that she's a person rather than a profile – and you say where you'd like this to go and on what timeline. I've come to call it the framing message, and it's a filter. Some will say "tonight". Some will say "slowly". Some will say "let's talk at the next meeting". Some will read it three times and never reply. All four are answers, and the fourth one saved you a dinner.

7. Money is discussed in writing, once, and handed over in an envelope

Never at the table. Never as a negotiation. Never as a loan, an advance, a "just this month". If the number she quoted at coffee is not the number she mentions after coffee, that's not a misunderstanding, it's a business model, and you're the business.

8. Know the going rate before you quote one

Nobody publishes a price list, which is how newcomers end up offering either half the market or triple it, both of which get you the wrong sort of attention. In Tokyo, in my experience and as of this writing: coffee is Y5-10k, dinner is Y10-30k (as a rule, I no longer pay more than Y10k) on top of the meal, depending on the neighbourhood and the hour. Otona is Y30-50k and the cheaper end is a red flag, not a bargain. Knowing these rates doesn't make you an expert. It just stops you sounding like a tourist.

9. The repair test

She cancels. Fine – people cancel. The question is whether the cancellation comes with a counter-proposal. "Sorry, Thursday's gone, could you do Saturday?" is a yes. "Sorry, Thursday's gone 😢" is a probably a no, and no amount of you suggesting Saturday will turn it into a yes. I have tested this more thoroughly than I'd like to admit. It has never been wrong.

10. Two unanswered messages is a close

Not a chase. Not a third message with a lighter tone. Not a "no worries if you're busy!" Close the entry, move the name to the last column, and feel absolutely nothing about it. She has done the same to you already.

11. Adults only, and the platform's ID check is a floor, not a ceiling

Everyone on these apps has passed an age check. Everyone. That doesn't excuse you from paying attention. If anything about her age is vague, joked about, or "kind of" – it's a no, and you don't need to explain why. There is no version of this that is worth the alternative.

12. Your real life stays at home

Real name, employer, neighbourhood, children's schools, the band's gig schedule – none of it. Separate LINE account. No photos of you that could be found elsewhere. You choose the hotel, you book it, you know where the exits are. This is not because she is dangerous. It's because you have no way of knowing who else reads her phone.

13. Protection. Always. Everywhere

This one isn't a rule, it's a condition of entry. There is no arrangement, no allowance, no long-standing teiki and no amount of trust that changes it. If it's raised as a negotiation, the negotiation is over. If it's raised as a compliment – "with you I don't mind" – smile, thank her, and don't mind either. You do not have the years to spare on being stupid about this.

14. Discretion runs both ways

You're not the only one with a reputation. She has a university, a job, a boyfriend she may or may not have mentioned. Don't wave. Don't linger in the lobby. Don't send anything you'd mind her screenshotting, because at some point somebody will.

15. Keep a Board

You will double-book. You will forget which one has the cat and which one hates coriander. You will, one grim Tuesday, address a message to the wrong name. A system of sorts fixes all of this..

16. Don't fall in love with the pipeline

Screening is fun. Messaging is fun. Coffee is quite fun. None of it counts. The only column on the Board that matters is what has actually happened.

17. You are not her boyfriend

You will, at some point, want to ask who she was with on Saturday. Don't. You will want to mind that she has other papas. Don't. You will want to send the eleven-p.m. message that starts "just wondering". Don't. The whole point of this arrangement is that it isn't the other kind, and the moment you start behaving as if it is, she will – quite correctly – conclude that you've stopped being the easy one on her Board.

18. Be a good client

Turn up on time. Pay what you said. Be interesting for two hours, which at our age means listening. Leave when it's over. Everything you'd want from a professional relationship, she wants from you – and unlike your last performance review, this one has a reply rate.

That's the list. None of it is complicated. All of it is easy to forget on a Friday evening with a good profile in front of you, which is why it's written down.

Next entry: a coffee that went exactly to plan, and what that taught me about the ones that didn't.