To your right, you see a device known as a Samovar. It's a bit of throwback nowadays, but you'll still find one in most every Russian grandmother's house and most Russian cafes and restaurants. It's basically a big kettle with a faucet instead of a spout. The cool thing about it is the fact that once it's full of steaming water you can put your teapot on top of it and the rising steam keeps it piping hot.
That's handier than you think because the Russian method of making tea ("Chai," in Russian) is to brew loose leaves in a very small teapot until it is very strong. Once the tea is ready, a small portion of the concentrated tea is diluted, cup by cup, with steaming water from the samovar. Russians tradionally flavor their tea with sugar, milk and sometimes additional spices.
Samovars seem to be a popular appliance throughout eastern Europe as well. The Turkish also sometimes use samovars to brew their tea but, unlike the tea Russians make, the Turks usually flavor their tea with large crystals of rock sugar or cubes of ground sugar and they almost never use milk. Turkish tea is a lovely, black tea with deep ruby tones served in what appears to be a small glass vase. In my clumsy experience, it can be quite a struggle to avoid burning oneself on the thin glass of your teacup. Once you're past that though, the tea is delicious.
Okay, so I know almost nothing about Kuwait and their manner of drinking tea. What I do know is that, next to Ireland and the UK, they regularly drink more tea per capita than anyone else. I've heard that the traditional method of making tea in Kuwait involved leaving the kettle on all day, cooking over a stone-lined hole in the ground called a "doo-wah."
Well, the chinese have been doing the tea thing for longer than anyone else. Hey, they invented the stuff! Today the chinese people may not drink as much tea as other peoples do, but due to their sheer numbers, the nation of China still manages to consume the second largest pie slice of the world's tea supply.
The chinese tea ceremony may be the most aesthetically pleasing way to drink tea in the world. The ceremony uses two cups, a "smelling" cup and a "tasting" cup. Tea is poured first into the small, slender "smelling" cup, where participants inhale the tea's aroma before pouring it into the shallow, wide-mouthed tasting cup to drink. The tradional teapot is very small, just enough for one serving, and is made of clay. The pot is sealed by soaking it with old tea before it is used.
When the Japanese discovered tea, they quickly surrounded its preparation and consumption in ritual. Japanese tea ceremonies are often long, involved things wherein the participants are meant to transcend all ideas of status to better appreciate the tea being served, the vessels the tea is served in, the food served alongside the tea and, ultimately, their own cosmic sense of unity and place in the grand scheme of the universe. No wonder the japanese aethetic is so popular in California. Japanese tea can be lovely stuff, but I must admit I'm not about to build myself a little tea grotto just to enjoy a cup of tea.
People in India have one of the most interesting methods of brewing tea, as tea in India is treated more like a serving of food than the serving of a simple beverage.
First water or milk is heated in a pot. As it's heating, sugar and spices (ginger, pepper, fennel, etc) are added (milk is added as well if it was begun with water), much like making soup. The entire mixture is brought to a boil and tea leaves are added. It is brought to a boil again and then strained into cups.
I have heard that indian people often find the western and asian styles of serving tea a bit too thin for thier liking, much like offering someone a bowl of chicken broth when they were expecting beef stew with vegetables. And you KNOW it must be tasty, because India consumes the largest percentage of the world's tea supply.