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The story
A thread titled “Apparently the average annual salary for male full-time employees in Tokyo is ¥8.61 million” popped up on 5ch’s “Nandemo Jikkyo G” (Live Anything) board. This kind of average-salary data goes viral again and again, and this time was no exception — commenters quickly pushed back with statistical nitpicks like “If the average is ¥8.61 million, the median has to be way lower” and “That doesn’t match doda’s numbers at all.” The conversation soon spiraled into a salary-bragging showdown of dubious veracity: one poster claimed to come from a landowning family with real estate held under multiple names, another claimed to be a freelancer pulling in ¥60 million a year, and even the thread’s original poster admitted to earning ¥12 million — with no way to verify any of it.
What people said
Can't remember exactly, but it was around ¥7.8 million
I looked up the median for full-time employees and it's nothing like that number
There's no way the median matches an average of ¥8.61 million
By the way, what's your salary?
Is OP just bad at math or something? lol
Calling doda's data a lie, that's rich (lol)
For the record, my salary is way higher than that anyway
Yeah right, nice story
So how much do you actually make?
Sorry, but I come from a landowning family
There are 3 more properties under different names, this is just one of them
if Re: #18 is just one part of it, does that mean the total is over ¥100 million?
Since I don't have a fixed salary, honestly I won't know my exact annual income until the year's over.
Last year my income came out to around ¥60 million, I think
This year it'll go up a bit since I built a new house
So what about you, OP?
My main job is an indefinite-term contract position (basically a "permanent" temp/dispatch job), and that's where my social insurance is enrolled.
On top of that, I make around ¥500,000 a month freelancing on the side.
¥12 million
How much are you getting back from your year-end tax adjustment?
Atta boy, OP!
Show us the withholding tax statement!
Background and Key Points of This Discussion
“Average income” figures tend to get pulled upward by a small number of high earners, and it’s usually the median that better reflects what “most people” actually feel their income is like. Even in private job-change services and official government statistics, it’s common to see gaps of several hundred thousand to a million yen between the average and median for the same population — so the thread’s pushback that “¥8.61 million is an average, not a median” is grounded in real statistical behavior. That said, claims like coming from a landowning family or earning ¥60 million a year are nothing more than anonymous self-reports, and nothing in the thread backs them up. These exchanges should be read with the grain of salt reserved for 5ch’s trademark “income flexing,” and the thread never even specifies which survey or year the ¥8.61 million figure actually comes from.
※This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (“Nandemo Jikkyo G”) thread “Apparently the average annual salary for male full-time employees in Tokyo is ¥8.61 million.”
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