It reads みふねまち — Mifune 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. Mifune is marked in red.
Measured as real great-circle distance from Mifune.
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御船町 is read みふねまち (Mifune 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.
Mifune has a population of 16,468 across 99 km², making it the 949th largest of Japan's 1,651 municipalities and the 20th largest of the 45 in Kumamoto.
The closest municipalities to Mifune are Kosa Machi (6 km), Kashima Machi (6 km), Misato Machi (8 km).