With plans for a weeklong series of shows featuring 500 artists from 40 countries performing in 50 venues — and a target of 20,000 attendees — it's clear from the get-go that Jon Lynch has ambitious plans for Japan Music Week. But there are still moments when he catches you out.
"We've had a lot of requests from around the world to do Japan Music Week events in those cities at the same time," he casually drops in, "so it looks like we'll have 10 or 20 cities join. That's just the beginning though. I believe next year we could have 100 or 200 cities in Japan Music Week."
Looking across his bookshelves, stuffed with hard-headed looking tomes on business and marketing, it doesn't seem like the office of a delusional Baron Munchausen type, but in the small-scale world of Japanese independent music, the sense of scale under which Lynch operates can't help but draw one up short.