It reads おおつちちょう — Otsuchi 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. Otsuchi is marked in red.
Measured as real great-circle distance from Otsuchi.
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大槌町 is read おおつちちょう (Otsuchi Cho). It is a town in Iwate 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.
Otsuchi has a population of 10,719 across 200 km², making it the 1115th largest of Japan's 1,651 municipalities and the 23rd largest of the 33 in Iwate.
The closest municipalities to Otsuchi are Kamaishi Shi (8 km), Yamada Machi (13 km), Tono Shi (32 km).