It reads さまにちょう — Samani 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. Samani is marked in red.
Measured as real great-circle distance from Samani.
Booking links are affiliate links — they cost you nothing and help keep Nihoner free.
These are affiliate links. Nihoner may earn a commission at no extra cost to you.
様似町 is read さまにちょう (Samani 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.
Samani has a population of 4,125 across 364 km², making it the 1396th largest of Japan's 1,651 municipalities and the 105th largest of the 169 in Hokkaido.
The closest municipalities to Samani are Urakawa Cho (15 km), Erimo Cho (21 km), Hiroo Cho (35 km).