Hiroko Miyashita received her M.A. in Liberal Studies from School for Graduate Studies, Empire State College, The State University of New York, B.A. in Linguistics from Tokyo Woman’s Christian University, and holds a certificate for Teaching Japanese as a Foreign Language from Waseda University. She has been teaching all levels of Japanese at LaGuardia Community College, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, The New School, and Adelphi University. Her research interests are second language acquisition and sociolinguistics. In addition, she has a strong interest in studying “Japanese pop culture and Japanese language”. She has a deep appreciation of Japanese traditional culture as well. She has learned shodō (Japanese calligraphy), playing koto (Japanese harp), and shamisen (Japanese banjo) for over ten years since she was four years old.