It reads しおやまち — Shioya 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. Shioya is marked in red.
Measured as real great-circle distance from Shioya.
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塩谷町 is read しおやまち (Shioya Machi). It is a town in Tochigi 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.
Shioya has a population of 10,152 across 176 km², making it the 1135th largest of Japan's 1,651 municipalities and the 23rd largest of the 23 in Tochigi.
The closest municipalities to Shioya are Yaita Shi (8 km), Nikko Shi (14 km), Otawara Shi (19 km).