Japanese celebrities favorite books collection site "Oshibon"
Previously I wrote an article about a Japanese memes site. A lot of people found this site useful to study Japanese culture and the Japanese language. To Continue from my previous article about useful Japanese sites, I found another site called Oshibon that lists favorite books of Japanese celebrities and what they said about their favorite book. This is a great way to find Japanese books to read and study at the same time.
The site even includes the favorite books of one of my favorite comedians, Hitoshi Matsumoto.
How the site works
As the site is in Japanese and it might be difficult to understand, I will now explain the most important functions and how to use the site so that you can fully enjoy the website.
Homepage
Let's start with the homepage of Oshibon, you can find a search box where you can search celebrities. Below the search box, you have several categories which you can click and this will display all celebrities of that category.
Categories
On the homepage let's check the actor category, which shows the following Japanese actors.
If you want to see their book recommendations, you click on '推し本みる' and you can see all of their favorite books.
Celebrity Page
Another feature is that not only can you see the books they recommend, but also you can see books that they have written (if they have written any). This is a great way to get to know more about the celebrity. As you can see in the image below, if they have written books the '著書' text will appear and if you click on it, it displays all books they have written.
Going back to the recommendation page, it displays the bio of the celebrity, and below that, we can see all books recommended by the celebrity. Next to the image of the books, you can find their comment about it so you can use it to study Japanese.
For example, my favorite comedian Hitoshi Matsumoto's favorite book appears to be あたしンち(Atashin'chi), a comedy manga. He writes the following about the book:
これ送ったら目覚まし時計もらえるねん。もれなくやねん。ええやろー。
Bookmark and Recently Viewed
There is a bookmark function so when you want to check the person again and do not want to search for it. You can use the "キープ" button (the yellow button) and it will be saved in your booklist, which you can access at the top of the navigation.
Also, the site will keep track of the last celebrities you visited, so even without using the bookmark function, you are able to find the last celebrities that you visited. You can find it in the navigation bar under "閲覧履歴".
Conclusion
If you are studying Japanese and looking for something to read, I think Oshibon can be a good place to search. As it allows you to read the same books as your favorite Japanese celebrities, which we think can be helpful in your Japanese studies.
Let us know in the comments who your favorite celebrity is and which book you decided to read!
