It reads ましこまち — Mashiko 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. Mashiko is marked in red.
Measured as real great-circle distance from Mashiko.
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益子町 is read ましこまち (Mashiko Machi). It is a town in Tochigi 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.
Mashiko has a population of 21,621 across 89 km², making it the 857th largest of Japan's 1,651 municipalities and the 19th largest of the 23 in Tochigi.
The closest municipalities to Mashiko are Mooka Shi (7 km), Ichikai Machi (8 km), Haga Machi (8 km).