Letters from Youkaichi - Introduction and Disclaimer

I just thought that I should add a quick word in here to explain these letters. Firstly, you should realise that they were never actually sent to anyone. Whether the people they were directed at have read them online I am not certain, but I didn't have the heart (or the energy/motivation, see Nick Snaps) to actually send them off, and I didn't think this would really benefit anyone anyway - they would probably have just triggered another deluge of meaningless apologies and promises to "work harder in future".

The process of writing and posting these letters has, however, been extremely therapeutic for me, a very effective way to purge the stress for which I felt these people (and many others - credit given where due) were responsible. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the workings of AIESEC (and I recognise that this category may include many current and dedicated AIESEC members), the addressees of these letters held positions in the Kobe AIESEC branch which gave them high personal responsibility for providing the Trainee (me) with a satisfactory experience. In one case this would have been by ensuring that the company arranged an appropriate traineeship (i.e. where I might actually learn something other than how narrow-minded and generally disagreeable the Japanese people can be), and the other by planning and arranging the non-work related portion of my time in Japan (e.g. accommodation, social events, logistics like bank accounts etc). How these not-particularly-challenging tasks were completely mishandled should become clear in the letters themselves.

It might seem surprising to anyone who can work out who the addressees of these letters are (from reading my other reports) that these were people with whom I had much contact, and to whom I could be considered to be indebted. Nevertheless, what is written at the links below is how I did and do still feel - emotions are not always rational or consistent. Maybe the fact that I had to suppress a large proportion of my bitterness about this experience until after I returned home is one reason for the vehemence of criticism in the letters.

With the relative objectivity brought by 15 months to "cool off", I can warn the reader that the letters linked below constitute little more than two big whinges. If you don't want to read that sort of thing, you'd best go back to Anecdotes instead. Alternately, perhaps you could familiarise yourself with a sample situation, entitled Nick Snaps, from my experience in Japan so that you can better appreciate the source of resentment expressed in the following missives.

Letter to Reception Team Leader(s)

Letter to TN Director

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