It reads おぐにまち — Oguni 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. Oguni is marked in red.
Measured as real great-circle distance from Oguni.
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小国町 is read おぐにまち (Oguni 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.
Oguni has a population of 6,939 across 738 km², making it the 1249th largest of Japan's 1,651 municipalities and the 33rd largest of the 45 in Kumamoto.
The closest municipalities to Oguni are Minamioguni Machi (4 km), Kokonoe Machi (17 km), Aso Shi (19 km).