nedan jitenI just finished reading a little book called Anata no Shiranai Nedan Jiten (Dictionary of Costs You Didn’t Know). It’s one of those little 500 yen books people buy to kill time while they’re commuting, and as the title suggests, is about how much things cost. Here are some of the surprising prices (in yen) from the book:

To cover every car on the Yamanote Line with ads from the same company: 14,300,000
To run an ad on the giant TV screen at Studio Alta for a week: 600,000
To open your own dental office: 40,000,000
To start up your own mobile ramen-selling truck: 1,500,000
Yearly unclaimed lottery winnings: 24,900,000,000
Amount paid to performers on NHK’s famous Kohaku Uta Gassen New Year’s program: 60,000
To get a big yakuza-style tattoo on your back: 75-150,000
To rent Tokyo Dome for half a day in the afternoon: 350,000
Estimated damage from an eruption of Mt. Fuji: 2,000,000,000,000
To have a chapel wedding at a top-class hotel: 3,700,000
Average amount paid in tax by a salariman over the course of his life: 46,000,000
To get an annual physical examination at a “ningen dokku” (click the link for a funny Danny Choo story about the poo examination) if the company wasn’t paying for it: 30-50,000
To buy a ten-character kaimyo (a Buddhist name given to people to use in the next world): 850,000
To attend a top-ranked private medical school for six years: 60,000,000