It reads おおあらいまち — Oarai 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. Oarai is marked in red.
Measured as real great-circle distance from Oarai.
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大洗町 is read おおあらいまち (Oarai Machi). It is a town in Ibaraki 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.
Oarai has a population of 15,696 across 24 km², making it the 964th largest of Japan's 1,651 municipalities and the 36th largest of the 42 in Ibaraki.
The closest municipalities to Oarai are Hitachinaka Shi (11 km), Mito Shi (11 km), Ibaraki Machi (14 km).