"James Annan"wrote...
> Well, the message I received referred explicitly to the issue of a crash
> on the way to work.

As some others have suggested, I believe the core problem may be one of
insurance for employees of the institute.  However, there may well have been
a 3rd party that raised the issue with the bureaucrat in the first place.
Perhaps he wanted to ride his donkey to work or who knows what, and being
rebuffed, complained of the double standard for the gaijin couple riding
that ridiculous tandem monstrosity.

In retrospect, I think the best thing would have been for you to shelve the
tandem at the very first hint of trouble so as to give the bureaucrat some
face, and then in a week or two find a discreet place for it before entering
the building.

On the other hand, you might consider that one of these days you'll probably
try driving down that sheer rock-faced hill on your off-road commute and
take a spill.  Then you'll be saying to the same bureaucrat "What do you
mean the insurance doesn't cover my skull fracture!?"   %-)

Finding a good place to park one's bicycle is not only problematic in Japan.
I had a heck of a time doing that at my former workplace in Manhattan. I
could freely ride the entire way downtown on a bike path next to the river,
but if I locked the bike up outside the office pieces would soon be missing
when I came back out.  One day my front wheel was missing and the valve caps
had been replaced with caps that read "Your bike sucks".  After 9/11 with
their headquarters destroyed in the WTC, the FBI relocated to a few floors
below my employer.  This resulted in the streets around the building being
barricaded and red-neck-looking guys prowling around with automatic weapons.
Nevertheless, one day I come out and my bike seat was missing.

I was pretty hot under the collar by this time, but finally, the word came
down we could park our bikes in the parking garage of the building. This was
A Good Thing as my former boss was fond of saying, although I once got into
a heated argument with an FBI agent who almost ran me over with his black
Suburban as he exited the garage the wrong way onto a one-way street. Still,
my bike always remained intact in the parking garage and I was grateful.
But this happiness was short-lived after the 9/11 chaos subsided, and
another company in the building re-claimed the bicycle rack space in the
garage, so it was back onto the street.  I departed to Japan not long after
and tried to sell the bike (which admittedly sucked bigtime) for $50 to a
crowd of Chinese bike delivery guys. They barely took one look at it before
dismissing me.  I finally left it in my building's storage room and don't
know what happened to it.

But I digress.

Best of luck in finding a harmonious solution,
Hibijibi