NPB salaries?

Here are the Top 10 Salaries for 2010:

+--------+----------------------+------+
| Salary | Name                 | Team |
+--------+----------------------+------+
|  6-oku | Lee, Seung-Yeop      | YOM  | 
|  5     | Ramirez, Alex        | YOM  | 
|  4.5   | Kanemoto, Tomoaki    | HAN  | 
|  4.3   | Iwase, Hitoki        | CHU  | 
|  4     | Matsunaka, Nobuhiko  | SFT  | 
|  4     | Fujikawa, Kyuji      | HAN  | 
|  4     | Johjima, Kenji       | HAN  | 
|  3.8   | Ogasawara, Michihiro | YOM  | 
|  3.5   | Abe, Shinnosuke      | YOM  | 
|  3.5   | Takahashi, Yoshinobu | YOM  | 
+--------+----------------------+------+

The units of currency are in oku yen, which is units of 100,000,000. That's the number you multiply by to get the total in JPY (Japanese Yen).

To convert to USD (U.S. Dollars), Google says that 6-oku yen is 6.6144 million U.S. dollars. (Please see link for exchange rate disclaimers and more information on exchange rates.)

Math is fun!

There are persistent rumours that Johjima's salary is actually five oku, but that the figure being released is "reduced" to avoid offending Kanemoto. He took a salary reduction on last year and so was not particularly pleased to find this out.

From ESPN, Johjima's MLB salaries were:

Year-By-Year Salary

Contract Year   Salary
    2006      $5,433,333	
    2007      $5,933,333
    2008      $6,383,333	
    2009      $7,666,666

And he was in line for $15 million more over the last two years of his contract in Seattle due to that inexplicable extension.

When he signed with the Tigers it was rumoured to be for between 2 and 2.5 billion yen over four years, which makes him a 5 to 6.25 oku yen player divided evenly through four years. Depends on the figures I guess, a lot of the English media reported it at 21 million dollars which varies in yen weekly.

- http://www.npbtracker.com/2009/10/johjima-agrees-with-hanshin/

- http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/mariners/2010148572_base28.html

- http://blog.seattlepi.com/print.asp?entryID=183336

- http://www.allvoices.com/s/event-4622675/aHR0cDovL3d3dy5jaGluYXBvc3QuY29tLnR3L3Nwb3J0cy9iYXNlYmFsbC8yMDA5LzExLzE1LzIzMjg2OS9FeC1TZWF0dGxlLU1hcmluZXIuaHRt

Considering how it looked like he was squeezed out of Seattle to make room for Moore with 2 years and 15 million+ dollars left on his contract, I always imagined that his figure with the Tigers would factor, at least in part, to make up for his departure from Seattle.

Whatever the case, somehow I highly doubt he is sitting at 4 oku a year.

Thanks for the helpful info. Surprised to see Lee is the top-paid player this year. Hasn't he been little more than a pinch-hitter the past couple seasons? Then again, the Giants can afford a 6-oku pinch hitter.