If you manage to make it all the way around the World Showcase without succumbing to exhaustion or exposure, you might find yourself in the Japan Pavilion. Although lacking the movies and rides of its neighbors, Japan is home to several good restaurants and one enormous store (Mitsukoshi) that holds all the Hello Kitty merchandise and Pocky Sticks you could desire.

One area (titled the “Festivity” section of the store by the Mitsukoshi recruitment site) which may hold interest for those who have had a trying day’s worth of touring is the Sake Tasting Bar in the back of the store. Here, different types of rice wine can be sampled and purchased, along with serving sets and a variety of other merchandise. Should you happen to look up in this area of the store, you might see this:

Puzzled, you might ask one of the CMs about it; however, unless you’re relatively good at either Japanese or charades, you might leave only partially enlightened, as I did.

What this turns out to be is a traditional sign for a Sake brewery called a sugidama, which means “cedar ball,” or sakabayashi which is Japanese for “sake forest.” The Japanese cedar plant is used at a variety of steps in traditional sake-making—the wood is used for the buckets and the leaves are used for straining—and is thought to have anti-bacterial properties. When a new batch of sake is ready, a fresh green ball of cedar leaves is hung as a call for blessings on the sake, and a new batch of sake is started. As the fermentation process of the sake proceeds, the leaves wither and finally turn brown, signaling the readiness of the sake for sale.

As the sugidama in Mitsukoshi never changes, it seems people are free to assume the sake is always ready for tasting or sale at the Japan pavilion. Perhaps, in enough quantity, it may even make you forget, for a while, the thought of that long walk back to the car.