It reads さようちょう — Sayo 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. Sayo is marked in red.
Measured as real great-circle distance from Sayo.
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佐用町 is read さようちょう (Sayo Cho). It is a town in Hyōgo 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.
Sayo has a population of 15,508 across 307 km², making it the 974th largest of Japan's 1,651 municipalities and the 35th largest of the 40 in Hyōgo.
The closest municipalities to Sayo are Kamigori Cho (15 km), Shiso Shi (18 km), Mimasaka Shi (18 km).