The odds have got to be nearly impossible. You and your pals have just formed a band and along comes a guy who loves your music and offers to pay for you to play overseas. Well, that's exactly what happened to Tokyo band Owarikara.
"Since we formed, we've always wanted to play worldwide," says Hyouri Takahashi, singer-guitarist of Owarikara. "Who could ever calculate the possibility of a band being picked up by a foreign sponsor?"
Owarikara formed in 2008 and play their own blend of 1970s Western psychedelic rock and Japanese Showa pop. Unlike many bands whose members hook up in high school, the four members met at gigs and started playing music together.