Why you should experience Smile Thailand in Tokyo, Japan.
Smile Thailand is a convivial Thai restaurant where Asakusabashi's mercantile character, neighborhood craft traditions, Thai culinary heritage and an expatriate's debt of gratitude to Thailand converge beside the railway tracks.
Set along the lane beside Edo-dori near Asakusabashi Station and just steps from Ichogaoka Hachiman Shrine, Smile Thailand occupies a street-level dining room where Thai staff helped determine everything from the original interior to the tablecloths and cutlery. The restaurant sits within an old wholesale quarter whose doll makers, craft suppliers and specialist merchants give these streets a working character distinct from nearby Asakusa. Thai cooks and imported ingredients keep the kitchen connected to the country that inspired the project, while the compact room and terrace preserve the ease of a neighborhood restaurant. The result is a personal Asakusabashi dining room whose Thai character grew from lived experience and the people its founder wanted to support.
What you should know about Smile Thailand.
Smile Thailand is best known for opening its Asakusabashi restaurant in July 2015 under founder Mihara, who entered hospitality after spending 37 years with an automotive-parts trading company and completing overseas assignments in Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand. Thailand became the decisive chapter: local colleagues repeatedly helped Mihara navigate an unfamiliar country, prompting him to become involved with the Thai community and eventually assist Thai acquaintances who wanted to operate restaurants in Japan but lacked experience navigating the process. Mihara began by securing premises while still working his trading career, then entrusted Thai staff with unusually broad control over the restaurant they were building; the team selected the interior, spoons, tablecloths and working rules themselves, establishing an employee-led philosophy that helped the first Asakusabashi operation gain traction. The restaurant later expanded into a wider Tokyo family, including a Chitose-Karasuyama location Mihara took over after a Thai restaurateur asked for help, a ten-seat street-food offshoot about 200 meters from the original, a pandemic-era delivery kitchen and an Ichigaya restaurant opened in September 2024.
Tom yum kung noodles carry one of Smile Thailand's strongest distinctions, pairing rice noodles with a creamy broth driven by chile heat, sourness and salinity; the preparation received three stars in a mystery-diner evaluation promoted by the restaurant. Pad Thai relies on a house sauce cooked down for more than six hours before meeting rice noodles, egg, bean sprouts, chives and shrimp, concentrating sweetness and acidity around the wok-charred ingredients. Gapao gai brings minced chicken and Thai basil together under high heat before a fried egg softens the chile and aromatic herbs, while green curry pushes coconut richness against spice and the perfume of Thai seasonings. Thai cooks, ingredients sourced for regional accuracy and a repertoire extending far beyond the familiar standards let the kitchen move through noodles, curries, stir-fries and herb-heavy plates while preserving the food culture that first connected Mihara with Thailand.
How to fold Smile Thailand into your trip.
Smile Thailand works as the meal in an afternoon exploring the doll making, merchant culture and centuries-old religious traditions that still distinguish Asakusabashi from Tokyo's more polished commercial districts.
Begin at Kyugetsu Asakusabashi Main Branch, whose history started beside the Kanda River in 1835 when former samurai Kyuzaemon Yokoyama laid down his sword to become a doll maker; successive generations carried the workshop through the Edo, Meiji and modern periods, with the fourth-generation Kyubei restoring the Kyugetsu trade name in 1884. Continue to Ichogaoka Hachiman Shrine, where tradition connects Minamoto no Yoriyoshi with a planted ginkgo branch and the worship of Hachiman, while the grounds later became associated with the Fukui Matsudaira family's Edo residence and folklorist Shaku Gyochi. Conclude at Torigoe Shrine, founded in 651 for Yamato Takeru and later associated with Minamoto no Yoshiie, whose June festival carries the immense Sengan Mikoshi through surrounding streets before its lantern-lit return after dark. The progression moves from a samurai who became a doll craftsman through warrior-linked neighborhood worship into one of the area's oldest surviving religious institutions, giving Smile Thailand a place within an Asakusabashi afternoon shaped by migration, reinvention and inherited craft.
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