Behind Edward and Yoshiko Koizumi’s ranch-style...

The traditional door to a Japanese teahouse is the nijiri guchiu entrance, a door so low and short that guests must crawl one by one to enter the room.

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In the Villa Park teahouse of Yoshiko and Edward Koizumi, this entrance is not used too often, but it is there as a reminder of the 500 years of Japanese tea ceremony traditions.

It reflects the attention to detail in every facet of this back-yard teahouse and surrounding Zen garden designed by Edward Koizumi, an Anaheim-based designer and land planner specializing in the Japanese/Western style.

While the Koizumis’ teahouse is attached to their California ranch-style house physically, spiritually its home is Kyoto, Japan.

One of four rooms in this redwood-paneled teahouse, the nijiri guchiu room, is 4 1/2 tatami mats in size (a tatami mat is 3 by 6 feet) with a ceiling made of woven strips of cedar separated by bamboo.

Nothing has been left to chance here or in the other three teahouse rooms--a small one for tea preparation, one with a cherry wood floor that allows for Western-style seating, and the main eight-tatami mat room where tea ceremonies are usually held.

The rooms are separated by sliding doors made of redwood and rice paper, most letting light filter in from the outside. The redwood and glass panels surrounding the house can be slid aside to make the teahouse open to the warm spring air or closed tightly during cool winter nights.

Koizumi has also built teahouses in Anaheim Hills, Laguna Beach, Carmel and Los Angeles. He recently designed and donated a teahouse to the Higashi Buddhist Temple of Newport Beach.

The construction of the Koizumis’ garden and 700-square-foot teahouse took more than two years. “I had to get planning (department) permission to design this since it’s done in a special way to be open without many walls,” Koizumi said. Every material used was chosen for its particular color, shape, size or texture.

Longtime Orange County residents, both Edward and Yoshiko were born in Japan. The teahouse project grew out of his love for design and hers for Japanese tea ceremonies. She is a master teacher of the ceremonies--there are more than 400 variations--and has been teaching them here for 25 years to Japanese and Western students.

Yoshiko is a student as well; she has been learning the ceremonies for 38 years from her teacher in Los Angeles and keeps current on ceremonial changes decreed in Japan. “The changes aren’t too great,” she says. “Maybe you move the tea bowl one inch forward instead of backward.”

The grand tea master of Japan has visited the Koizumi teahouse, which he named “Senya-An.”

In the teahouse, everything is revealed slowly, as in the tea ceremony itself.

A narrow walkway on the east side of the main residence leads to the structure. Along the path is a covered wooden bench used as a waiting area for guests, who step carefully from stone to stone embedded in moss bordered by delicate ferns. In the front of the teahouse is a sand-and-stone garden for moon viewing, and pine and cypress trees that seem to have been twisted by centuries of winds. Mounds of grass, rocks and plants block all neighboring houses from view.

The ritualized tea ceremony begins outside the teahouse at a stone washbasin fed by water from a bamboo kakehi flume.

The basin used in the Koizumis’ garden came from Kyoto and was originally the base of a large lantern. The depression that held the lantern has become the vessel for water. Guests kneel on a flat rock in front of the washbasin and use a dipper to pour water over their hands. In front of the basin is a hollow with black stones to catch the spillage.

The teahouse is entered by stepping up on a rock and into an entry area. After shoes are removed and white socks put on, one enters the spacious main room, which has a ceiling of cedar boards handpicked for their design. Each board is separated from the next by cedar twigs.

A small alcove off the main area has a gong from Japan for calling guests to tea; next to that is another alcove with a calligraphy scroll that says, “Every day is a good day,” and a single vase with a flowered branch in it.

A specially created white cedar log acts as a divider and support between the two alcoves.

“The log is from Japan,” Yoshiko Koizumi said. “It was wrapped when it was young so it would grow and have a wrinkled pattern. It takes a long time for it to grow. In Japan they say a father will plant a tree for his grandson.”

Edward Koizumi said he tried to use as many American products as possible in the teahouse. “The floor in one of the rooms is American cherry, and I used American redwood, cedar, bamboo, stones and rocks,” he said. Some things such as the traditional cedar log, the gong and the charcoal for the tea ceremony fire can only be found in Japan, he said.

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Although it looks very traditional, there are modern conveniences in the teahouse, such as air conditioning, electric lights, electric burners and a stainless steel sink hidden under the more traditional bamboo flooring in the tea preparation room.

In the two-tatami preparation room, Yoshiko Koizumi keeps tea bowls, bamboo teaspoons, dippers, lacquered dishes, tea cloths and other pieces of equipment she needs for the different ceremonies. There is a water faucet here, hidden storage in the floor and drawers for keeping the colorful sweets she gets from Japan that are eaten before drinking the green tea.

Everything has been carefully considered and planned.

For a tea ceremony, Yoshiko Koizumi kneels on the tatami-covered floor of the main room and dips hot water with a bamboo ladle from a black iron kettle suspended from the ceiling on a chain.

A small table of shelves holds Yoshiko’s tea equipment, chosen for its beauty of detail and harmony among pieces.

The guests kneel to her left in their order of importance to receive their cups of green tea. Just as the preparation is highly ritualized, so is the receiving of the tea bowl, the sipping of the tea and complimenting of the hostess.

For a time, the Western world--just a stone’s throw away--seems a world apart.