It reads もてぎまち — Motegi 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. Motegi is marked in red.
Measured as real great-circle distance from Motegi.
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茂木町 is read もてぎまち (Motegi 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.
Motegi has a population of 11,631 across 173 km², making it the 1087th largest of Japan's 1,651 municipalities and the 21st largest of the 23 in Tochigi.
The closest municipalities to Motegi are Ichikai Machi (8 km), Mashiko Machi (11 km), Haga Machi (12 km).