Central Tokyo by E-Bike: Three Hours Across the Landmarks

Tokyo surprises people as a cycling city. It is flat, the side streets carry almost no traffic, and cycling is so normal here that nobody looks twice — you cover four or five times the ground a walking tour manages while still stopping wherever you want.

Three hours takes in the centre properly. The Imperial Palace grounds sit on the site of Edo Castle, seat of the Tokugawa shoguns for two and a half centuries before the emperor moved in from Kyoto in 1868, and the moat loop around them is one of the most pleasant rides in the city, with the original stone ramparts and gates on one side. Ginza's grid gives you the flagship stores and the 1930s Wako clock tower. Nihonbashi is where every road in Japan is still officially measured from — there is a marker set into the bridge — and Tsukiji's outer market kept trading fish, knives and tamagoyaki long after the wholesale auction moved to Toyosu in 2018.

E-bikes are available and worth taking if you are not a regular cyclist; the assist removes any effort from the few slopes and the total distance. Standard bikes are there if you would rather pedal.

Your guide handles the route, the traffic and where to leave the bikes at each stop, which is the part that makes cycling Tokyo unaccompanied more stressful than it needs to be.

A morning start is the right call, and not only for the light: Tokyo is hot and humid from June to September, and Tsukiji's stalls are liveliest early. You need to arrive already able to ride — this is not the place to learn — and the tour runs in light rain but is refunded in full if the weather turns heavy.