A Santa Cruz resident and attorney by vocation, Stewart Lenox often finds himself on this side of the Santa Cruz Mountains—at Saratoga's Hakone Gardens, to be precise. He comes to tend to his avocations: namely, appreciating the Japanese-style gardens, participating in traditional Japanese tea ceremonies and settling into his two-year elected term as president of the Hakone Foundation's Board of Trustees.

Lenox says he first visited the nonprofit Hakone Gardens in 1969 on the recommendation of a neighbor. "I was very impressed with the gardens and the buildings," he recalls.

He soon struck up a friendship with the late Tanso Ishihara, Hakone's gardener at the time. By the end of the 1970s, Lenox had gotten even more involved by helping restore some of the property's buildings.

This was during his pre-law years, when he worked as a general contractor, even though he also held a bachelor's and master's degree in philosophy. "Rather than become a philosopher, I bummed around a little and learned to build houses," he says. "But then, since I'm a student at heart, I decided to pursue a law degree, and I became a lawyer."

Before diving full time into law, however, Lenox took a trip to Japan, where, he says, a propitious thing happened. The car he borrowed had a loose muffler, so he got underneath the car to fix it. While on the ground, he noticed a pair of black shoes standing beside the car. Upon extricating himself, he saw that the shoes belonged to a Japanese man who proceeded to ask: "What are you doing here?"

"What am I doing under the car, or what am I doing in Japan?" he replied to the man, whom he later came to know as Hajime Watanabe. After a brief conversation, during which Lenox professed his love of Japanese gardens, architecture and ceramics, Watanabe invited Lenox to partake in a traditional Japanese tea ceremony.

And he's been hooked ever since. He even decided to learn the Japanese language, which he began studying in 1985. He still hasn't mastered the language, although he did fall in love with and marry his instructor, Sakae Fujita.

"My first impression of the tea ceremony was the beauty of the utensils. Plus it was such an intimate way of sharing something with another person, which I've come to see is the essence of tea," Lenox says. "The host and the guests all play roles. It's very different to see it as an observer than to experience it as a participant."

Even the "tea sweets" served with the hot green beverage hold symbolism, with certain steamed or baked goods only served during certain seasons or significant times of the year.

In Japan, Lenox says, many different "tea schools" exist side by side, but there is little if no mingling among the schools' different traditions and practitioners. "I think the artificial division is something we should leave in Japan," he asserts. "I think we should have an ecumenical approach here in the U.S. Tea is tea, and the essence of partaking in the ceremony is basically the same."

"I want Hakone to become a tea center where people from all schools can come together and feel comfortable," Lenox adds. "I also want it to become one of the best traditional Japanese gardens in the United States and a cross-cultural center for all Asian cultures in the U.S."

One means to Lenox's tea-related end is the opportunity Hakone Gardens offers the public to learn about the schools of thought, traditions and rituals involved in the Japanese tea ceremony. The first takes place the third Sunday of each month, from March through October. Hakone visitors of all cultural backgrounds are invited to share a bowl of tea in the Cultural Exchange Center at noon, 1 p.m. or 2 p.m.; no reservations are necessary.

People with more curiosity about the ceremony can attend the ongoing series of classes taught every Friday from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. by Minako Tsuji of San Jose. A bit more formal is "Introduction to the Tea Ceremony," a class taught the first Thursday of each month by Saratogan Aiko Tauchi, a classically trained tea professor.

For more information, call 408.741.4994 or visit www.hakone.com.