It reads とべちょう — Tobe 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. Tobe is marked in red.
Measured as real great-circle distance from Tobe.
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砥部町 is read とべちょう (Tobe Cho). It is a town in Ehime 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.
Tobe has a population of 20,290 across 102 km², making it the 871st largest of Japan's 1,651 municipalities and the 12th largest of the 20 in Ehime.
The closest municipalities to Tobe are Iyo Shi (8 km), Toon Shi (10 km), Matsuyama Shi (11 km).