thumb|Image of doucha () by Zhao Mengfu, [[Yuan Dynasty]] is a Japanese pastime based on the identification of different types of tea. The custom originated in China where it is known as Doucha (闘茶) during the Tang dynasty, before spreading to Japan in the Kamakura period. However, whereas Chinese tea-tastings concentrated on assessing the quality of the various teas offered, tōcha became a friendly contest in which players would taste a number of cups of tea and attempt to guess the region from which the tea originated. Originally the goal was to distinguish the high-quality tea of from othe
thumb|Image of doucha () by Zhao Mengfu, [[Yuan Dynasty]] is a Japanese pastime based on the identification of different types of tea. The custom originated in China where it is known as Doucha (闘茶) during the Tang dynasty, before spreading to Japan in the Kamakura period. However, whereas Chinese tea-tastings concentrated on assessing the quality of the various teas offered, tōcha became a friendly contest in which players would taste a number of cups of tea and attempt to guess the region from which the tea originated. Originally the goal was to distinguish the high-quality tea of from other kinds, but as connoisseurship developed, the goal became the correct identification of the tea's place of origin. The contest eventually attained a standardised formal procedure known as "four kinds and ten cups", in which participants tasted three cups each of three different teas and a single cup of a fourth variety. Prizes, including silks, weapons, gold and jewellery, were awarded for successful guesses, which gave tōcha participants a reputation for excess and extravagance (basara).
Large quantities of tea could be consumed at such gatherings (usually ten or fifty cups, hence the alternative names juppukucha ("ten cups of tea") and gojuppukucha ("fifty cups of tea") for the contest). Alcohol was often drunk as well.
Discovered by embedding cosine similarity (sentence-transformers MiniLM, 384-dim).