Meet the Harunos, a rather unconventional, but happy and loving family nonetheless. They live in a small town in the mountains just out of Tokyo where life is good and quiet — but that doesn't mean they don't have their own little problems. Eight-year old Sachiko (Maya Banno) is bothered at inopportune moments by her own giant-sized double, who hangs around sitting on buildings staring at her, while her older brother Hajime (Takahiro Sato) privately wrestles with raging hormones and a love-struck crush on a pretty new classmate (Anna Tsuchiya from KAMIKAZE GIRLS). The grown-ups have their difficulties too: the mother (Satomi Tezuka) struggles to come out of retirement as an animator, and the father (Tomokazu Miura) is a professional hypnotist who occasionally plies his trade on his own family with often-funny results. An uncle (Tadanobu Asano from ICHI THE KILLER) drops in for a visit, but he also has a hidden agenda as he comes to terms with a romance that ended years ago. Another uncle (Ikki Todoroki) who is a successful manga artist also stops in for his birthday, wanting to give himself something special. And finally there's Grandpa (Tatsuya Gasuyin), the most eccentric and perhaps the most perceptive of all, who continues to search for a better way to live life to the fullest. Written, directed and edited by Katsuhito Ishii, THE TASTE OF TEA is a unique and gentle family portrait tackling the universal themes of time, people and life.