Mike woke up to sunlight slicing through the thin hotel curtains and a headache that felt like someone had parked a Bentayga on his skull.
He lay still for a moment, staring at the ceiling of the tiny Shinjuku room, piecing together the previous night. Dom Perignon. Johnnie Walker Blue. PST pizza. Tiffany’s hand on his thigh. Yu-san and Ryota disappearing into a conversation in Japanese that got progressively louder and funnier as the bottles emptied. At some point Mike had tried to explain blockchain consensus mechanisms to Tiffany, who had nodded politely and refilled his glass. The last clear memory was Ryota handing the waiter another 10,000 yen bill and saying something about how Anatoly owed him a surfing trip for this.
His phone buzzed. A text from Ryota.
Morning sunshine. Picking you up at 11. Brunch at my office. Don’t die before then.
It was 9:30 AM. Mike sat up slowly, drank the entire bottle of water on the nightstand, and reached for his phone to call Tom.
It rang twice.
“Mike?”
“Hey, Dad.”
“You didn’t call yesterday.” Tom’s voice was calm but edged with the particular tension of a parent who’d been checking his phone every twenty minutes for eighteen hours. “You promised me, Mike. Day one. Every day.”
“I know. I’m sorry. The schedule was really packed when I landed — meetings ran late and by the time I got back to the hotel I just crashed.” The lie came out smooth. Too smooth. Mike felt a pang of guilt, followed immediately by a flash of memory — Tiffany leaning into him, the scent of vanilla, the cold bite of champagne — and he pushed all of it down.
“How was the first day?” Tom asked, softening slightly.
“Good. Really good. The contact here is solid — he works at a major investment fund. He’s showing me around, setting up meetings for Monday. I’m learning a lot.”
“Are you eating?”
“Yeah, Dad. I’m eating.”
“Okay. Call me tonight. I mean it.”
“I will. Promise.”
He hung up and sat on the edge of the bed, elbows on his knees. Through the window, Shinjuku hummed with a hybrid Sunday morning energy — pedestrians hung over from Saturday escapades, drivers annoyed at them blocking their way, nonchalant shoppers happy to waltz into every store, delivery trucks navigating streets that seemed too narrow for them. A convenience store jingle played on loop from somewhere below.
Mike opened Discord and navigated to his DM thread with GTXMaxi.
A new message, sent at 3 AM Tokyo time:
GTXMaxi: Hey, sorry — had to make a quick run to Korea for a work thing. Some arbitrage opportunity came up, but nvm, long story. Won’t be back in Tokyo until next week. Sucks we can’t link up this time. Next time for sure.
Mike stared at the message. No GTXMaxi meetup this trip. Disappointing, but not devastating. At least Ryota had turned out to be a far more willing and connected contact than Mike had expected. He typed a quick reply — no worries, next time — and closed the app.
The taxi to Toranomon took twenty minutes. Mike watched the city scroll past — Yoyogi Park, the Meiji Shrine forest peeking above the tree line, the glass towers of Akasaka multiplying as they moved south. Tokyo on a Sunday morning had a strange serenity to it, as if the city was taking a single deep breath before the week began.
Ryota’s office was on the 37th floor of a supremely awe-inspiring skyscraper that made every building Mike had ever entered in California look like a strip mall. The lobby alone had marble floors, a waterfall feature, and security guards in suits nicer than anything in Mike’s closet. He gave his name at the desk. The guard made a call, nodded, and directed him to a private elevator bank.
The doors opened on 37.
Ryota was waiting in the hallway, sunglasses on his forehead, wearing a cashmere sweater and joggers. He looked like he’d been awake for three hours and had already accomplished more than most people did in a week.
“You survived,” he said.
“Barely.”
“Well, welcome to the MZ Fund.”
Ryota grinned as he ushered Mike into the office. The MZ Fund was the crypto investment arm of Yousuke Maezawa — the famously eccentric Japanese billionaire who’d founded Zozotown, the country’s largest online fashion retailer. The fund ran entirely on Maezawa’s personal capital. Ryota, as he explained while walking Mike past glass-walled conference rooms and Bloomberg terminals, had started in the e-commerce space himself — building an apparel business in Japan that he’d eventually exited to Maezawa, which was how they’d first connected. That relationship, combined with Ryota’s track record from the ICO days — the OmiseGo and EOS wins he’d bragged about at Magic Eden — was what led Maezawa to tap him to run the fund. A kitchen with more coffee machines than employees sat at the end of the hallway. But the view stopped Mike in his tracks. Floor-to-ceiling windows looked straight down the center of Tokyo — the Imperial Palace gardens, the Rainbow Bridge, Tokyo Tower, and beyond it, the faint outline of Mount Fuji on the horizon. The entire city laid out like a map he could reach into.
Mike thought: one day, I want an office like this. And I’d get one for Tom, too.
A large Shiba Inu bounded out of Ryota’s personal office and skidded to a halt at Mike’s feet, tail wagging furiously.
“That’s Vitalik,” Ryota said.
Mike laughed — the first genuine, unforced laugh since arriving in this universe.
They went downstairs to a ramen spot three blocks from the office. Ryota said it had the highest rating on Tabelog — the Yelp of Japan, he explained — and that he ate there at least twice a week. The line was twelve people deep on a Sunday, but Ryota exchanged a few words with the chef through the kitchen window and they were seated immediately.
Mike ordered the shoyu ramen. When it arrived — a deep amber broth with perfectly thin noodles, a soft-boiled egg split in half, and slices of chashu pork that dissolved on contact — he understood why people waited in line. The first sip of broth was a religious experience. Rich, layered, with a depth of flavor that seemed impossible from a single bowl. He ate in reverent silence for two full minutes.
“Good?” Ryota asked, already halfway through his own bowl.
“This is the best thing I’ve ever eaten.”
“Told you.” Ryota slurped a noodle with zero self-consciousness. “So — you know anyone here in Japan? Besides me?”
Mike set down his chopsticks. “Sort of. There’s someone I’ve been talking to on Discord. We connected over a memecoin conversation. He’s based here, but he had to go to Korea this weekend so we couldn’t meet up.”
“Memecoin conversation?” Ryota’s chopsticks paused mid-air. “What kind of memecoin conversation?”
“He posted this analysis of Dogecoin — the supply dynamics, the cult community around it, why it might not be a joke. I reached out because I think memecoins are going to become a much bigger deal than anyone expects. Not just Doge, but the whole category.”
Ryota set his chopsticks down entirely. His expression shifted — the mischievous party-boy energy from last night replaced by something sharper, more focused. The investor in him had woken up.
“What about a Japanese or Asian version of Dogecoin,” he said slowly.
Mike waited.
“Think about it,” Ryota continued, leaning forward. “Doge has a cult following in the West. But there’s no Asian equivalent. No meme coin that resonates with this market. What if we created one? Something rooted in Japanese internet culture. Something with a mascot that people here already love. I could probably get the Chinese cabal involved too.”
He looked down at Vitalik, who was sitting patiently under the table, hoping for a piece of chashu.
“A Shiba Inu coin,” Ryota said.
Mike’s brain short-circuited.
$SHIB. The Shiba Inu token. The coin that would launch in August 2020 and eventually reach a market cap of over $40 billion. The coin that would be listed on every major exchange, endorsed by Vitalik Buterin himself — the real one — and become the second most famous memecoin in history after Dogecoin.
Was this how it happened? Had some version of this conversation always taken place — a young investor and a kid in a ramen shop, connecting dots that would reshape the market? Or was Mike now actively altering the timeline by pushing an idea that might not have existed without him?
It didn’t matter. What mattered was the opportunity sitting across from him — a young, well-connected Japanese investor backed by a billionaire’s fund, with the appetite for risk and the network to move markets. If Ryota launched $SHIB, and Mike was in from the very beginning…
“I think that’s a brilliant idea,” Mike said carefully. “The Shiba Inu breed is already iconic in Japanese culture. Doge is an American meme — this would be the Japanese answer. And if you position it right, with the right community and the right launch strategy, it could be massive.”
Ryota was already typing notes into his phone. “I’d need a developer. Someone who can build the token, set up the contracts, handle the technical side.”
“I can do that,” Mike said. “Or I can find someone who can.”
Ryota looked up from his phone and grinned — that same mischievous grin from last night, but this time with a razor edge of ambition behind it.
“I like you, Mike.”
He picked up his ramen bowl, drained the last of the broth, and set it down with a satisfied thud.
“Oh — two things. I made some calls this morning. Got you a meeting at Frontier for tomorrow. Thirty minutes with someone in their marketing and comms team. Best I could do on short notice.”
“That’s more than enough. Thank you.”
“Also — you’re supposed to be here for games, right?”
Mike nodded, slightly sheepish, since his actual interest in the gaming cover story had been steadily declining relative to everything else that was happening.
“I set up a meeting with Colopl. It’s a pretty famous gaming company here, publicly listed and the founder is smart. Figured it would be useful for your research.”
Two meetings for Monday. His one and only business day in Tokyo. Colopl and Frontier. The cover story and the real mission, back to back.
“Ryota, seriously — thank you. For all of this.”
Ryota waved him off. “Anatoly said take care of the kid. I’m taking care of the kid.” He scratched Vitalik behind the ears. “Besides, I think you and I are going to make some money together.”
End of Episode 9