It reads しらおいちょう — Shiraoi 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. Shiraoi is marked in red.
Measured as real great-circle distance from Shiraoi.
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白老町 is read しらおいちょう (Shiraoi 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.
Shiraoi has a population of 16,638 across 426 km², making it the 943rd largest of Japan's 1,651 municipalities and the 39th largest of the 169 in Hokkaido.
The closest municipalities to Shiraoi are Tomakomai Shi (22 km), Noboribetsu Shi (25 km), Chitose Shi (38 km).