Kaya Munakata is a lecturer in the Department of English at Kanda University of International Studies, Chiba, Japan. She completed her MA in TESOL at Teachers College, Columbia University and her undergraduate studies in Comparative Culture with a concentration in Japanese Studies at Sophia University, Tokyo. Her current research focuses on learning English through realia especially artworks and hands-on art activities and connecting visual images and language learning. Kaya has lived and traveled in different countries. While she lived in Tehran, Iran, from 2013 to 2016, she joined the International Institute of Jam-e Miras-e Jahan, a local organization that promoted traditional crafts, art and heritage to educate children and empower women, as a project assistant, an art workshop facilitator and a language coordinator. She has held fund-raising Iranian handicrafts exhibitions in major cities in Europe and Japan including Barcelona and Tokyo. In addition, she taught Japanese to bilingual Japanese-Iranian elementary and middle school children at the Tehran Weekend Japanese School.Kaya loves art and is currently a facilitator of the English talk program, Let’s Talk Art, a participant-centered talk program for international visitors, at the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo.