In my surroundings, there was once a person who earned over 10 million yen a year at D2 and said, “I won’t apply for the Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research because my salary will decrease.” They were able to gather their salary from various sources by actively doing sales, and I remember being impressed and thinking, “So this is what it means to actively earn.”
This is also related to the recent discussion, but I feel that the majority of Japanese researchers tend to be passive (in the sense of not knowing much about overseas cases). They have a stance of “applying when there is a public offering,” and there are few people who actively go out and compete for budgets and positions.