中国
Geopolitical division/region of
Japan located in the far western part of
Honshu island and consists of the following 5
prefectures:
The Chugoku region is surrounded by the Kinki region to the east, and The Sea of Japan to the north and the island of Kyushu to the south. The name Chugoku in this particular geographic location means "middle country" or better yet said as "middle of the country" because it is near the middle of Japan - if you include all parts from Okinawa to Hokkaido.
* Don't be confused that the Chugoku region of Japan has the same sound (in standard Japanese) and kanji as the country of China in Japanese, as some_guy points out below.
* Sometimes, more often than not only in Japanese travel brochures, the western and north-western part of Yamaguchi prefecture is called by the name Choshu (not to be confused with chaashuu) which is heard very often in late Edo Era and early Meiji Era history, which is an abbreviation for its old province name Nagato.
Chugoku is written in Japanese fonts at the top of this writeup so you might experience mojibake.