All the main characters are named after AKG members.
Hitori Gotoh -> Masafumi Gotoh
Nijika Ijichi -> Kiyoshi Ijichi
Ryo Yamada -> Takahiro Yamada
Ikuyo Kita -> Kensuke Kita
They're mostly aligned instrument-wise, with Koyoshi playing drums like Nijika, Takashiro playing bass like Ryo, and both...
1 ryo was about 16.5 grams of gold, the price for 1 koku of rice.
Since they're gold coins we can just look at the gold price, which as of writing this today comes to around $75 per gram of gold.
This gives us 75 * 16.5 = 1,237.5 * 3 = 3,712.5 USD.
Thanks for the TL.
However, I think the cut versions of that one joke were better, the one that's on the page changed too much. I think that despite the worse quality, the other scanlator handled that one line better.
Seika's gap moe is way too powerful, how can one character be this cute?
Thank you for the chapter, I imagine translating the song must've been hard, and it still probably suffered a bit via translation.