It reads おとべちょう — Otobe Cho. 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. Otobe is marked in red.
Measured as real great-circle distance from Otobe.
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乙部町 is read おとべちょう (Otobe Cho). It is a town in Hokkaido 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.
Otobe has a population of 3,520 across 163 km², making it the 1432nd largest of Japan's 1,651 municipalities and the 117th largest of the 169 in Hokkaido.
The closest municipalities to Otobe are Assabu Cho (9 km), Kaminokuni Cho (19 km), Yakumo Cho (33 km).