It reads あしきたまち — Ashikita Machi. This is one of the harder names in the country: small municipalities are exactly where Japan's nandoku chimei (難読地名, "hard-to-read place names") live.
This place is one of 1,651 in Chimei, our Japan city game. Read the kanji, then pin it on the map.
Play Chimei →Every dot is one of Japan's 1,651 municipalities, plotted at its real coordinates. Ashikita is marked in red.
Measured as real great-circle distance from Ashikita.
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芦北町 is read あしきたまち (Ashikita Machi). It is a town in Kumamoto Prefecture.
町 means "town" and is read chō / machi. A town. 町 is read either chō or machi — which one is local convention, and it varies by region. This is one of the classic traps in Japanese place names.
Ashikita has a population of 15,621 across 234 km², making it the 969th largest of Japan's 1,651 municipalities and the 21st largest of the 45 in Kumamoto.
The closest municipalities to Ashikita are Tsunagi Machi (7 km), Minamata Shi (11 km), Kuma Mura (16 km).