It reads きたがたちょう — Kitagata 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. Kitagata is marked in red.
Measured as real great-circle distance from Kitagata.
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北方町 is read きたがたちょう (Kitagata Cho). It is a town in Gifu 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.
Kitagata has a population of 18,308 across 5 km², making it the 910th largest of Japan's 1,651 municipalities and the 28th largest of the 40 in Gifu.
The closest municipalities to Kitagata are Mizuho Shi (5 km), Motosu Shi (6 km), Gifu Shi (7 km).