From the rulebook: I think when most people hear "tea ceremony," they expect the kind of elaborate and somber affair you might experience if you go to a formal Japanese tea ceremony. But what I do for friends, and what this game is about, is not that. However, I also don't want to say it isn't still a ceremony. It very much is, in its own way. It's a ceremony in the way that buying your friend a drink at the bar to celebrate is a ceremony, or getting coffee with a friend you haven't seen in a while is a ceremony. So this game is an attempt to capture a small ceremony I perform for friends who visit from afar. And perhaps I'm performing it for you again here by giving you this game. I'm laying the tea set out for you not as an assortment of vessels and utensils, but as a system of rules. I'm asking you to be my audience and my guests, to sit and take part in something, and in the process come away with a new experience. User Note: a Game Chef 2015 finalist.