It reads きかいちょう — Kikai Cho. 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. Kikai is marked in red.
Measured as real great-circle distance from Kikai.
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喜界町 is read きかいちょう (Kikai Cho). It is a town in Kagoshima 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.
Kikai has a population of 6,602 across 57 km², making it the 1272nd largest of Japan's 1,651 municipalities and the 31st largest of the 43 in Kagoshima.
The closest municipalities to Kikai are Tatsugo Cho (35 km), Amami Shi (43 km), Yamato Son (54 km).