Before I moved to Japan in January of 2007, I called my best transcription client; a writer for several well-known American magazines. He'd more or less given me the idea to become a freelance transcriptionist when I was dazed and unemployed following the end of my internship at the famous publication we both worked for. Since then, he'd stuck with me through computer deaths, moves, and rate changes and I wasn't looking forward to telling him I was leaving.

“Listen,” I began. “I have news.”

“What?” he asked warily. “You got another job and won't have time to transcribe?” My client is intuitive as well as loyal.

“Close,” I stammered. “But no. Actually, I'm moving to Japan.”

“You're what?” he demanded. I'd expected this reaction: it was what all my relatives, friends, coworkers and clients had said when I told them my plans. When my decision was fresh, their shock had invigorated me. With just weeks left to go before the big move, each cry of, “You're what?” had become increasingly unsettling.

“Yes. Moving to Japan.” I repeated.

“But ... why?”

“It's a sabbatical.” I replied simply. “Sabbatical” had become my catch-all explanation of choice as I was too ashamed to admit to anyone that I was having a career crisis. After years of writers' block, I needed a drastic life change to figure out if the editorial/journalism field was really where I belonged.

“How long?” he asked.

“A year.”

“What are you going to do in Japan; teach English?”

“Yes,” I admitted; I'd come to resent how typical my adventure was turning out to be. “But, look. I'm not leaving you in the lurch. We can still make the transcription work. You e-mail me your interviews in mp3 format anyway, right?”

“Yes ....”

“So when I get internet set up in Japan you can send me files and I'll transcribe them, same as always.”

“But,” my client said. “Isn't Japan something like 13 hours ahead of New York?”

“I guess ....” I hadn't thought of that.

“And,” he continued. “How will I pay you?”

I knew that one: “Paypal!” I declared. “My school is setting up a bank account for me and you can just send it there.”

“I guess you've got it all figured out.” he said.

“We'll make this work.” I promised. “The internet is on our side.” If my client was dubious, he didn't say so. I might have been nervous enough for the both of us but as far as I was concerned, my plan had to work. Not only would I need the extra money while I was getting settled, but transcription would be a link to my life back home.

I arrived at Kansai International Airport in Osaka several weeks later, suffering from an exotic case of what I'd dubbed “New York City Bird Flu.” The 13-hour flight had been wretched and my condition threatened to override the sense of pride, exhiliration and terror that should have overwhelmed me upon taking my first steps into Japan. Instead, I was surrounded by what seemed like millions of strangers and quickly discovered that memorizing the Japanese phrase for, “Where is the train station?” didn't mean I'd understand the reply. When my company's housing liaison picked me up in a van and took charge of my massive suitcases, I was limp with relief.

We hadn't been in my microscopic Japanese apartment for more than five minutes when I threw out my burning question.

“How can I get internet?” I asked.

“I don't know,” he said, eyeing my runny nose with distaste, no doubt wishing he had a Japanese-style dental mask with which to protect himself. “Ask the other tenants.”

As soon as he'd bid me goodbye and good luck in Japan, I began knocking on my new neighbors' doors, only to get an answer even worse than my landlord's: they'd set up their internet months ago and were still waiting. Months?

That was the first evening of my career sabbatical in Japan: sick as a dog, unable to figure out my Japanese phone card, and wondering if my scheme to keep my transcription side business alive would work after all.

A Bit on the Side

My Visa says I came to Japan to teach English, but, like many who take the same Visa-friendly path, my real goal was to experience life in a foreign country in hopes that it would give me perspective on my life back home. And I didn't learn to type in order to become a transcriptionist. When I was 6 years old, I decided that I wanted to become a writer and immediately sat at the typewriter in my father's office to teach myself how to type. Typing came easily to me and so did writing. After my parents gave me an electric typewriter for Christmas, I spent great chunks of my childhood and adolescence clacking away, filling my drawers with nearly completed novels and dozens of short stories and plays. I took a typing class in high school and quickly reached 100 words a minute which, to me, meant I could finish my second novel all the more quickly. By the time I started New York University in the fall of 1998, I was ready to make my mark in the writing world. Unfortunately, I was thin-skinned and so discouraged by my early failures to fit in with the creative writing crowd that I turned to journalism in order to satisfy my dreams of a writing career. I applied for an internship at a glamorous magazine I'd been reading since I was a child and was ecstatic when I got the job. One day, soon after I started, a staff writer tossed an audio cassette into my cubicle. She'd interviewed an up-and-coming actor, she said, and needed the interview transcribed. If I wasn't busy, could I ...? Of course I could; no favor was too great for the writers. When I e-mailed her the transcribed file in a word document, she was amazed at my speed and soon, I was receiving cassettes from staff writers on a daily basis. I loved helping the writers, but the deal was only sweetened when a couple of them offered to pay me for transcribing in my off time.

My internship ended in 2002, a terrible time to be a recent graduate in search of a job in New York City. Broke and growing more frantic by the day, I began waitressing and cleaning houses to pay rent. Then, the writer who eventually became my best client e-mailed me to ask if I was still doing transcription. Before you could say, “Craigslist,” I'd accepted his gig and posted an ad looking for others online. Within hours, I'd received several inquiries and soon, I had several steady clients. That first month, I was delighted to find that I could make rent after all. Eventually, I found a job in my field – writing and then editing for a media research website – but that terrifying bout of unemployment remained fresh in my mind and I continued transcribing on the side.

Though it's never made me enough money to replace full-time gigs, transcription gives my income a “boost.” It's helped me pay rent and medical bills. It's helped me take vacations. It helped me save up money to fund my move abroad. I might have learned how to type in order to write novels, but until I do, it's transcription that pays and it's transcription that allows me to teach only part-time in Japan.

From New York to Japan

All puns aside, my globe trotting stint as a freelance transcriptionist has been an interesting trip. In New York, I transcribed interviews for magazines, focus groups, videos and even television for closed captioning. The closed captioning gig was particularly memorable since one of our clients was the Playboy Channel. You might wonder why such programming would need to be closed captioned. It's the law in New York City, folks; everything gets captioned. On the bright side, those jobs were always quick and sometimes quite educational. In Japan, I only transcribe magazine interviews, which is just as well since life here fills my head with loads of new knowledge daily. For example: internet can take eons to get connected. My first night in Japan, that bit of information was the last thing I wanted to learn.

I used to wonder if my new neighbors in Japan were confused as to why I wilted when they uttered the word “months.” It was simple: the more time I spent sans internet, the more work – and money – I would lose. When I started teaching, I asked every other English teacher I met how they got their internet accounts set up and was regaled with horror stories. One teacher had waited 4 months to get his connection. Another had waited 6. Another still reported that his internet company set installation dates, then came on entirely different days when he hadn't arranged to be home. I learned that in Japan, internet often takes a long time to set up because there is just one telephone company and all internet services must communicate with it in order to set up any connection. The language, too, is a big problem. Japan – or at least the city I live in – is not particularly foreign language-friendly at this point in time. While there are databases of English-speaking doctors readily available, English-speaking professionals like hairdressers must be hunted down. Good luck, too, finding an English-speaking waiter or civil servant when you're applying for health insurance. Internet companies are no exception to the Japanese-only rule and I spoke none when I arrived. Like most non-Japanese speaking foreigners, I had to rely on a Japanese friend to set up my account, which only made the whole process longer. First, he had to research companies for me since all the information was in Japanese. Then, when I received notifications in the mail, we had to arrange meeting times so he could read them.

“3 weeks,” the company promised, but that time frame passed and soon, it had been a month. I was busy teaching English to disinterested children and timid adults of all ages but I was nonetheless growing antsier by the day; I've never been comfortable living with only one source of income. I didn't want to lose my clients, either, so I took a desperate step and started transcribing from internet cafes.

Japanese internet cafes are fascinating. Many are open 24 hours and offer menus with items like curry, sandwiches and pilaf. Internet cafe patrons range from teenagers seeking a quiet manga-reading haven to people who need a place to crash for the night. For the casual web surfer they're fantastic, but for a transcriptionist, they're not exactly ideal. First, the keyboards and computer systems are, naturally, Japanese. Even if you're familiar with Windows, seeing the “Shut Down,” “Restart,” and “Save,” commands in Katakana can rattle you. Furthermore, not only are the punctuation keys out of their familiar alignment, but accidentally pressing the “Shift” key can turn each keystroke into Japanese script. In the beginning of my internet cafe transcription days, it took a while for me to get acclimated, even typing 100+ words per minute. I often went over my allotted time, growing increasingly bitter about having to hand over part of my dividends to the cafe. Sometimes I worked at the cafe until 3 in the morning to meet a deadline and returned to my miniscule 1-room apartment reeking of smoke. Finally, my internet hook up day came: 4 months after I moved to Japan. Business quickly commenced as usual with the added quirk of allowing for the time difference. My clients were all instructed to e-mail me at my fancy Japanese cell phone when they'd sent me a file so that I knew to go straight home from school or wake up early to work on it. Even now, they often forget the time difference and e-mail me at 4 in the morning.

Technical Difficulties

My sabbatical continued. The first year, I was teaching 5 days a week and transcribing in my spare time. My internet trauma inspired the first of my attempts to learn Japanese; I hate being dependent on others for simple things as much as I hate living on only one source of income.

Gradually, my Japanese adventure became everyday life. I used chopsticks. I slept on a futon. I drank beer out of cans under cherry blossoms. I learned Japanese grammar. I started a blog. I visited temples. I sang silly songs to children and taught adults old-fashioned idioms. I ate. And ate. And ate. Transcribing for my clients back home in New York helped me make up some of the moving costs and, later, paid for part of my MacBook.

After 5 months of successful overseas transcribing, I discovered one morning that my old Dell Inspiron laptop had died in its sleep. I tried to feign surprise but it wasn't as though I hadn't seen it coming; it had been unhappy for months, chugging through tasks and taking nearly 5 minutes to start up. I'd ignored its pleas, thinking a new memory stick (ordered online) would be the answer to its problems but, alas. My Dell died at the beginning of the month, which is typically my busiest time for transcription since my clients conduct their interviews then, well in advance of their editorial deadlines. I needed a new computer – and fast – so I dashed back to that old, smoke-clogged internet cafe and attempted to buy one online. One by one, my favored American media outlets – Dell, Best Buy, Circuit City – informed me that they wouldn't ship to Japan. I then tried to go through Japanese websites – Toshiba, Dell Japan – only to find that there was no English translation for the pages and I grew weary plugging each item description into online translators. What other options did I have? I supposed I could buy a computer from Best Buy and have it sent to my parents back home so that they could then ... send it to me in Japan? Feasible, yes, but what a hassle. Plus, it would probably take about a week to get to me. I had deadlines and the cafe had claimed enough of my earnings.

Frustrated to be facing another technical hurdle, I complained to a friend back home. He only laughed at me.

“You're in Japan!” he chided, “The land of electronics. What do you mean you can't find a computer?”

Exactly: I was in Japan. All the machines would have a Japanese OS and Japanese keyboards. I'd seen ads in English language magazines for computer experts who could convert the Japanese systems to English and outfit you with an English keyboard but that would take more time and cost even more money. The laptops I was seeing in the shops were expensive enough to begin with and even with the full time teaching and side business, I wasn't jazzed about the idea of spending over two thousand dollars on a computer.

In the end, I bought a MacBook. Expensive, but it could be converted to an English OS with the click of a button and an English keyboard could be installed for free at the store. It was even light enough that I could carry it home myself. My Japanese friend was with me again to parse the warranties and system features but even so, the technicians installed the keyboard incorrectly. I brought it home, set to transcribe, only to discover that 9 of the keys didn't work. Back to arranging a time my friend could meet me, back to the store and, once again, back to berating myself for not speaking better Japanese.

It's been a year since the computer switch and everything – overseas transcription, living abroad – is great. Life in Japan, despite obvious drawbacks like the language barrier, hellishly humid summers and the extremely limited choice of jobs for non Japanese-speakers, has been so good for me that my 1-year career sabbatical turned into 2. When I renewed my contract with my school this term, I decided to go part-time which I considered crucial for my mental health: I'm not a teacher in real life, I just play one in school. The move abroad has done everything I hoped it would do and more; I no longer question if I'm meant to work with words. Teaching English has made me a more concise writer and a more compassionate editor. Best of all, living in Japan has given me so much inspiration that my creative writers' block is gone and I make full use of my time off to write. My blog has become popular enough that I've gotten the courage to pitch travel articles and I've completed a quarter of the novel I've dreamed of writing for years. I could never have gotten so much writing done in New York when I worked full-time and handed over most of my paycheck to my landlord. Transcription, as always, has come to my aid and until my home office fails again or Carpal Tunnel Syndrome finally kicks in, I'll keep typing.

I moved neighborhoods last week and this, of course, meant having my ADSL account moved to the new address. By now, my Japanese is good enough to talk to company representatives face to face and alert them of my situation, but I still need a Japanese friend to make the phone calls to the company to set up installation dates.

They're coming Monday. I hope.

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