Tokyo Backstreets by E-Bike: Yanaka, Shitamachi and the Old Quarters

This is the ride for people who have already done the landmarks, or who never wanted them. It heads into Shitamachi — the 'low city' — where the lanes are too narrow for coaches, the buildings are two storeys of wood and tile, and daily life still runs at a neighbourhood pace. The name is old and literal: this was the flat, low-lying eastern half of Edo where the merchants and craftsmen lived, below the hills the samurai occupied.

Yanaka is the centrepiece. It largely escaped both the 1923 earthquake and the wartime firebombing that flattened most of eastern Tokyo, so what stands there is genuinely old rather than reconstructed: temple walls, wooden houses, a shopping street where people still buy their dinner from individual butchers and pickle shops, and a resident cat population that has become the district's unofficial mascot. Yanaka Ginza is entered down a short flight of steps locals call the sunset stairs, and it is at its best in the late afternoon when the croquette stands start frying.

Nezu and Sendagi round out the loop with quiet shrine grounds and back lanes — Nezu Shrine keeps early-1700s buildings and a short tunnel of vermilion torii — while Kagurazaka brings in the stone-paved geisha alleys that turned into one of the city's better eating districts.

A bike is the right tool here specifically because the area is a maze. On foot you see one street; by bike you can wander the whole grid, and your guide knows which turnings are worth taking. The ground is flat and the pace easy, but you need to be a confident rider: the backstreets mean constant stopping, starting and tight turns, and the group rides quietly and dismounts where asked.