If you visit Tokyo, who have to decide if you are going to be one of the three million to four million people who pack its trains daily, or you would be on bicycles, navigating streets, lanes and alley and roughly traced paths around the city. The Yamanote charts a loop about 21 miles long through the heart of Tokyo — an iconic commuter line that has stitched the city together since its completion in 1925.

Riding the entire Yamanote loop by train takes only about an hour, but if you are on bicycle is three days for this tour. For such a trip you need a bike, if you don’t bring your own one, try Cool Bike, a local shop, near the Iidabashi rail station, that rents out reliable folding bikes at a cost of 2,000 yen per day (about $21), and for a fee they will deliver them directly to central Tokyo hotels.

The Yamanote rolls through a number of narrow roads enveloped by the rich aroma of roasting green tea. This timeless pocket of small, traditional businesses was just 10 minutes by bike from Marunouchi’s skyscrapers. Then you will crossed a river, the Sumida, and wandered through on tiny lanes barely wider than a car, lined with two-story houses, small apartment buildings and an occasional neighborhood shrine marked by vermilion-colored torii.

Afret that you will reach Sadachiyo district, or traditional Japanese inn, in Asakusa, a famous Shitamachi neighborhood that’s home to a major temple, geisha houses and back streets that feel a world away from the modern city. You can have a dinner in the century-old sukiyaki restaurant for dinner, then capped the evening with a relaxing soak at a nearby community bathhouse.

The next morning you will reached a station called Komagome and stopped at the Rikugien Garden, a classic Japanese landscape garden established in 1702. Twenty minutes later you will arrive in the modern metropolis. On two wheels, you are going to be part of Tokyo’s flow, too.