A ALEMANHA e o JAPÃO do RS | Ivoti [DOCUMENTÁRIO]

Between gentle hills and valleys covered in green, there is a corner where time seems to move slower, and every detail carries the memory of those who helped build this piece of history. In this place, flowers spread as if they wanted to color even the soul of those who pass by, and the architecture carries on the walls the strength of a people who came from far away, but who put down deep roots. Here, traditions meet the simplicity of the interior, where everything smells of good food, of childhood spent outdoors and of community celebrations. It’s the kind of place where any activity can become a culture lesson, and a simple walk can take you from Germany to Japan without even leaving Brazil. This is Ivoti, and on this journey, you will discover a German village that has stood the test of time, learn how flowers became part of the identity of an entire city, understand why the Japanese chose this piece of land to restart their lives, and discover how all of this connects in the history of a town that is small on the map, but immense in meaning. We will walk along incredible trails, listen to accents that carry tradition, get to know what real cachaças are, learn recipes and visit unusual places that only those who live here really know. And, of course, we will show what almost no one sees: the extra to the ordinary that makes Ivoti one of the most authentic and inspiring municipalities in Rio Grande do Sul. Ivoti is a small city of 25 thousand inhabitants on the slopes of the Serra Gaúcha that may be unknown to many, but those who know it know that it is special. As a legitimate municipality built mostly by descendants of German immigrants, it is also a sister city of Rottenbuch, in Germany, and once we arrive, if we take a break, we can understand what awaits us ahead. Here the architecture draws attention everywhere you look and we realize that, despite being small, the city vibrates in every square meter, in every landscape, in every building and in every historical detail that may go unnoticed by those in a hurry, like this peculiar burnt church – it was once the headquarters of Ivoti a long time ago, but today it arouses the curiosity of many who arrive at this place. In the 1800s, this church here in devotion to Saint Peter the Apostle was built and for a long time it was the main church in the region. But in 1924, a little girl decided to go up to the upper part, where the church bell is located, to see a bird’s nest and they carried a lamp with them. The lamp caught fire in the bird’s nest and caught fire throughout this church. Over time, they began to rework it, built a new church in front. Until, in 1986, this place here, where we are, was recognized as an artistic and historical heritage of Rio Grande do Sul. And that same year the church caught fire again. But this time no one knows what happened. They simply didn’t renovate any more, they just changed the roof and to this day the question remains: what happened in this church? While little is known about the last fire in this church, much less is known about the interiors of Ivoti. It turns out that in a city like this there is a lot of country life, and it can be said that everyone is proud to say that they are settlers, people who make a living from agriculture. But here it’s not just older people who do this, as one would expect, young people already demonstrate their love for the land from an early age, a fact that we see in places like this school, for example. Here, children periodically go in groups to rural properties to understand how day-to-day life works. I had the opportunity to join in and follow one of these tours and I’ll tell you that it’s been a while since I’ve had such an immersive experience with the countryside, nor with the fun of being surrounded by children who are still discovering the world. Oh sir, oh sir! I’m not a teacher. You’re calling me “sor”, but that’s okay. Call me uncle. Oh uncle! No, uncle is very old. AND! Between rabbits, turtles, cows and even collecting chicken eggs, we discover how people live far from the city’s urban core. Here everything is simpler, but the kind of simple that brings peace, calm and a little desire to stay. Every place is unique and there is room to learn even in the most unexpected moments. Is that your horse? That’s my horse. Is it a horse or a mare? A mare. What’s the name? Gateada. It’s the name of her coat. Creole horses have several… the color of their hair is called coat. Then each one has a color and each color has a name. Then the name of her fur, let’s say, is gateada. That’s why her name got spoiled. When we say that his eye was broken by the cat, is this what we are talking about? What happens when you get caught in the eye? I don’t know! In fact, it means that the animal’s pupil has dilated and this indicates fear, tension or danger. In other words, something serious is happening. The mare probably only realized what awaited us in the next scene. A real “fruhstick” – a snack that the school staff prepared for us, all made by themselves! Now, if you are attentive, you may have noticed that Ivoti is far from the achromatism of big cities, that black, gray and white that seems to standardize and take the life out of everything that could enchant the eye. Here, in addition to the colorful trees that distract us a little from the abundant greenery, the flowers are the great attraction wherever you look. Not surprisingly, “Ivoti” is an indigenous word that means flower, and that is why the municipality is also known as “City of Flowers”. And why is Ivoti known as the City of Flowers? It started as Bom Jardim, in fact, first Berghahnerschneiss, I don’t know what it was, then where the Berghaner family was the first to settle and then it became Bom Jardim, because the Germans have the habit of growing flowers in gardens, the houses are very, very beautiful, with beautiful gardens. And then this name was created, the city of Flores. In German culture, or in the German houses you go to, there will always be lots of flowers. The garden is what shows the house, shows the property. There’s even an interesting question that said that Italians plant a lettuce plant in front of their house and Germans plant flowers. So, German properties are characterized by always having a well-blooming garden. You can already see that Ivoti has a very strong presence of German culture in all urban and rural areas of the municipality. Most of the residents here are direct descendants of the immigrants who arrived in the region at the beginning of the 19th century. At the time, this place was a colony of São Leopoldo and the settlers who arrived here were given some land and then allowed them to prosper in their own way. As there was not much infrastructure or assistance available, immigrants needed to use the knowledge they brought with the tools they had to build their first homes quickly and efficiently. And so the first houses in the “fachwerk” style, also known as half-timbered, arrived in Brazil. Among all the cities of German colonization that exist today in Brazil, Ivoti is one that stands out the most precisely because of the issue of preserving the half-timbered architecture. Today, in the city, there are around 150 houses that have been inventoried. So, wherever we are walking, we will come across residences like this, with this classic style that the Germans brought when they arrived in 1824, here in Brazil. Curious, right? And there are a lot of those around here. Indeed, from the urban part of Ivoti to the most remote interiors we find this curious pattern of construction that is not exclusive to the municipality, but rather to the first German immigrants who settled in Brazil. Here, several walking routes are designed to encourage visitors, and even locals, to get to know these buildings and understand a little more about the region’s first residents. These are the popular Enxaimel Routes. You can see that I clearly didn’t come prepared for this trip today, wearing jeans. Explain to me what this half-timbered route you do here is? The half-timbered route consists of five paths, including with our help, which the City Hall and the Sports Department created for solo walking, without the need for a guide. So, there are five routes with varying degrees of difficulty. The one we are doing now is medium difficulty, there is not much elevation, but the landscapes are very beautiful. There’s no denying it. At every turn a new work seems to attract our eyes. Many houses were abandoned, others were renovated, but a large part still remains intact, some even being reused for new purposes, different from 200 years ago when they began to be built. But after all, what does this structure of half-timbered houses mean? What is this architecture? Half-timbered style, we can see in this house here, it is the wooden structure that is the base of the house. And then the filling between these woods, at the time, was mainly made with clay and straw. Today we use bricks, you can use anything to fill it. Half-timbered means the structure. So you see this in films from the Middle Ages. All of Europe uses this construction. England, Germany, the whole world had this construction and it came in 1824 with the Germans. They had this technology, so to speak. For a long time, houses like these were seen as simple housing or even associated with poverty, as they had a low cost of materials, were quick to build and had a basic structure. Over time, German architecture evolved and other types of construction gained space and brought a greater aspect of wealth. However, from the second half of the last century onwards, half-timbering began to be seen with different eyes, it was valued as a historical and cultural heritage and gained a new meaning: it was the symbol of the resilience of German immigrants in Brazil. Ivoti is one of the cities that best preserves this style in Brazil, and proof of this can be seen in a small space that is simply one of the most charming in Rio Grande do Sul. If you Google “Ivoti” one of the first results that will appear is this place where I am: Núcleo de Casas Enxaimel. It’s a curious place, with an architecture a little different from what we’re used to seeing around, and it’s a place where people come together to buy handicrafts or colonial products from producers who are here in the municipality, or simply to do nothing, which is what I’m doing now in the late afternoon. The Núcleo de Casas Enxaimel is a space in a lower region of Ivoti called Buraco do Diabo where events are held from time to time. Here, there are several houses in this German style and in each of them an activity takes place internally. There are crafts and local products, small stalls that serve as points of commerce during events, natural green spaces everywhere and, once again, an absurdly addictive peace of simply being here on any given day doing nothing. This place here, where we are now, this was once a village, did people ever live here? Those who had commercial or service establishments. The number of half-timbered houses in Ivoti, it was once a place where services took place. It is not a place that was set up to welcome tourists, for example. No, no, no, no. This here is original. The houses are all original. Until the end of the 1990s, it was all a ruin, the houses were practically falling apart. In his time, the main street of Rio Grande do Sul also passed through this hole here, which was Rua Presidente Lucena, which connected São Leopoldo to Vacaria and Lagoa Vermelha. It was the only access linking the metropolitan region with the mountains. So, obviously, this service was set up there and commerce was set up there where there was a lot of people passing by. From the grandeur of the stone bridge that gives access to this place, you can understand that this was actually one of the main roads in Rio Grande do Sul in the past. Today the story remains, which is told even by buildings built some time later. This place, for example, is a bar located in this house that maintains the half-timbered style of the other original houses. But from prosperous times to today, a lot has changed in this village and many people left here for understandable reasons, leaving behind a space that was abandoned for a long time and, obviously, went into decline. What was the first reason it slowly began to decline? When BR-116 was built, it was already asphalt and this asphalt then led to Dois Irmãos, Morro Reuter, Picada Café, Nova Petrópolis and diverted all this flow that passed here via BR-116. Another reason that also led to the failure of the core in itself, that what sustained was commerce and services and the entire colony around here brought products to the warehouse here to exchange – onions, potatoes, beans, lentils, everything that was produced here. And by the 1940s the situation had changed, as other settlers also began to buy a truck to transport their cargo further. So it no longer depended on local commerce, but could take it to another merchant. This also weakened it a little bit. And finally, when this generation ended, combined with the various floods, all of this also contributed to people not really wanting to stay here anymore. Most of Ivoti is in higher areas, but this region of Núcleo Enxaimel is always punished when the level of the river, which passes under the Imperial Bridge, rises. And it’s never a small thing. This is the height of the waters that arrive here and flood this core. So here we have the milestone of June 15, 2023, right! Guys, did she get up there? Yes, yes, so far. It was, I think, 1965. It was around that time too. I think it’s a little lower than that here, but this is absolutely historic. But as I said, resilience is the word that defines a people like this who arrived in an abandoned land and made it one of the most promising places in Brazil. And it may be that one of the greatest examples of this is in the curious production of cachaças that takes place here in the city, and which today is one of the most awarded in our country and even in the world. What is the history of cachaça in Ivoti? When my family left Germany, they were already producing English potato schapps in Germany. And logically, when they came to Brazil, they came with some potato seedlings and continued planting and brought a distiller. They continued to distill the drink because in the past there was no drink that we could say “is the typical drink of Brazil”, because the legislation on cachaça as a typical Brazilian drink was only in 2002. So, when they arrived, they were producing schnapps from 1824 until 1848. It was there that they discovered that sugar cane had more sugar which would yield more. So they switched to sugar cane. A long time passed from schnaps to cachaça, and even when the Brazilian drink was taking its first steps, it was not valued by many, especially because the manufacturing processes were still quite rustic. So cachaça also had another use. But after that, cachaça became a bargaining chip. Why did she become a bargaining chip? Because there was no money. So my grandfather and my great-grandfather would go to the places where the drovers passed by and they would stay there. Then they exchanged the cachaça for hoe, the cachaça for salt, the cachaça for other supplies that they did not grow on the farm. So cachaça wasn’t sold for money, for kings, I don’t know what the money was called in the past. So it was the family’s money, and precisely that then became a custom. And then this region, the coastal region of Osório, Santo Antônio da Patrulha. Then other immigrants of other descents began to arrive, Azoreans, 50 years later, Italians and each one came with something. The Italians came with grappa and the Germans came with Schnapps and then went for cachaça. Today it can be said with complete certainty that Ivoti is one of the 5 Brazilian cities with the largest number of registered cachaçarias. Here three are the largest, most traditional, as well as main; and with each product we rediscover what this drink really is and how important it is to Brazilian culture. And what is cachaça? Cachaça is nothing more than the juice from fermented sugarcane juice. Back in 2002, when the French fought with the Brazilians, the Brazilians used the name champagne and France said “oops, you are using the name champagne? So we will use the name cachaça”. Then, at the time, President Fernando Henrique Cardoso said “hey, cachaça is the typical Brazilian drink, champagne can even be French. But then let’s sign the agreement here that champagne will be French and cachaça will be Brazilian”. And there was the first international agreement recognizing that cachaça was typically Brazilian. Silver cachaça, gold cachaça, with spices, in an oak barrel, balsam, flavored, aged or not… it’s a universe of options that opens up before our eyes. I understand that choosing the best one can be a difficult task, so we’ve organized a brief tutorial so you can become a little more knowledgeable about the subject and perhaps swap that same brand for a different one. Shall we try the first one so you can taste the sugarcane? Could it be. So we’re going to take a white cachaça, which is the most common one we have so you can smell a little of that sugarcane aroma. And as I’m going to follow you too, we have a ritual for drinking… so everything has to have a ritual, otherwise why drink? So the first thing you’re going to do is this to smell the aroma. This aroma can never attack you when you feel the aromas, if it attacks you when you feel it, don’t drink it, because the next day you will feel sick. It has to be soft here and it can’t be burning, right? So this is what has to happen. Then you rotate the cup. This way. And then you will see the tears that will form, which are the dancers’ legs. Everything has a story! And the more dancers there are in the glass, the better the consistency of the product. Just look! That speaks volumes about its viscosity, right? Exactly! Secondly, what do you do? I’ve already smelled the aroma, now you take a small sip in your mouth. Spread through the mouth. Blow. Blow the alcohol out. I swallowed before blowing. Was it supposed to be swallowed? No, it was supposed to blow, but then swallow, then swallow. But I would spit in your face if I had to… No, no, no, after swallowing you blow. He took the alcohol out. Now feel what was left in your mouth, what was left in your mouth and what was left in the aftertaste. The aftertaste cannot burn. Yeah, it was all in the mouth. It can get hot. You felt it come down, it got hot, but it didn’t burn. That’s right, but the mouth was what stayed the most, what heated up the most. It’s exactly. And what can’t happen? That feeling of a cat in reverse, which is going down in reverse with its claws active. Burning. It’s exactly. So this is the minimum for you to know if the drink is of quality. It doesn’t matter if the drink is cheaper or more expensive, but to see if it has quality, this is the ritual you have to follow. We can take the cachaça that is one year old, two years old, three years old, eight years old, ten years old, 12 years old and do this same ritual. What will differ is the aroma, flavor and the time it spent in the barrel. Now answer: what was the oldest cachaça you’ve ever tasted? 25 years of this cachaça? 25 years. In January he turned 25 years old. Think that every year more… 2026, January 2026, 26 years. Boy, how dark is it! I mean, it’s dark here too. This is for you, right? No, it’s our cachaça that will be launched one day. Another different one, we are already 21 years old, which was taken in 2021. The 12 year old was taken when it was 12 years old and is the continuation of this aging process that was produced in the year 2000. Hasn’t this one been on the market yet? Only 21 years old. Not 25 years. Now I’m feeling… So let’s make a toast. It’s us. specials. That’s it, to anyone who’s tried this one yet! No! Feel the aroma. Feel 20 years old. 25 years of history inside this barrel. Seriously, folks. This barrel was closed in… In the year 2000. When the millennium turned, this barrel was closed. This cachaça first spent six years in a French oak barrel and then it was transferred to a Brazilian wood called balsam. So today this cachaça has been in Bálsamo for 19 years and started in French oak for six years. This one here you will see that it is already much more… its density… and it will have its density coming down the tears of the glass much slower. It’s another product! It’s worth trying, from the simplest to the aged, to see that Brazilian cachaça is not left behind when comparing it to the famous imported whiskeys. Prost! Prost! Prost Mama and prost papa and prost for us. That’s it. And Prost Tutti. Prost Tutti for all families I mixed German with Italian. Prost to everyone, right! Prost Tutti. I’ll tell you this is the first time I drink cachaça in my life, maybe the right way, because I’ve always been very prejudiced against cachaça, but it’s that story we have with coffee. Why do we add sugar to coffee? Because you’re drinking the wrong coffee. Why do popular beers have to be drunk at such a cold temperature? Which is so you don’t taste what it really tastes like. And we mature our palate. And I’ll tell you that it’s the first time I’ve done this with cachaça and that I liked it and that it didn’t bother me. Exactly, so imagine if we got an eight-year-old bottle? ten years, twelve years? We’re going far from there! Ivoti is still strong in the production of other spirits such as gins and vodkas, as well as traditional beers – classics of German culture. There’s no shortage of drinks around here… or food! Ivoti is a city rich in gastronomy, a tradition that has permeated and been improved since the arrival of the first immigrants, but what really stands out in the city is a slightly unusual trio: rosca, nata and honey. Regarding dairy products, let’s say that the ones here are awarded throughout the world, mainly for their cheeses; and regarding honey, the most famous in Rio Grande do Sul are from this place. But it’s the rosca, a true regional heritage, that we have to talk about. Can I try it? Please can! Guys, this is huge. Wow, look at this! It’s warm, it’s a very… soft dough inside. This one shouldn’t fill your belly too much because it’s crazy. This is Ivoti’s rosca, the star of one of the most peculiar festivals in the state: Mel, Rosca e Nata, which takes place every year at Núcleo de Casas Enxaimel. Lucky for you, I have her recipe for you to try at home, just adjust the quantities as 20 units per batch are made here. Here we have tapioca starch and salt, that’s all. So we need boiling water to blanch the cassava starch. Then I add the soybean oil. And more milk and eggs. And then you mix it and see if you need to add more water to get it to the point it needs so we can work. And for approximately how long does she stay messing around here? Until mixed. Sometimes the cassava starch is different, so it mixes faster. There are times when it’s not so pretty, so it takes a little longer. So, it’s good. So here I position it, I leave the size right and they stick it there and adjust the size later, inside the shape. It was obvious that I would have to get my hands dirty, literally speaking, to show you that nothing is so simple when you don’t have practice. Give it a little crush like this and it just spreads like this. And it opens. So what now? Then you put it together like this , then you make an amendment there. Now comes the difficult time for her to get there in her own form. Take it. What do I have to do? So now, within the form? Inside the shape. Take a hand here and another here. That’s it! Put it in and just adjust it. Guys, this is the ugliest donut. This is the thread they will return. I didn’t even have the courage to see it ready, but they told me that 30 minutes later, at 200ºC, it was as good as the others. I have my doubts. And do you sell like this donut here? You sell around with the Kombi, how does it work? Yes, one of the ways we sell is with Kombi, which we have our fixed routes in several places: Ivotti, Presidente Lucena, Morro Reuter and, in addition, we also participate in municipal fairs there in the center, both the Festa da Rosca and colonial fairs, which are monthly. And we also supply it to schools, many children eat this doughnut. So that’s basically it, the way we do it… And then you discovered that if you mixed the donut with the cream and honey it made… It was perfect! And at this point, always among descendants of German immigrants, one detail cannot go unnoticed – most people speak Hunsrück, a version of German with Brazilian Portuguese. We have already seen this happen in the city of Rolante, but in Ivoti the incidence is immensely higher. And I notice that you have a stronger accent. Do you speak the dialect, Hunsrick? I speak the dialect, I speak classic German, I speak Portuguese. [speaking German] You’re going to have to stop talking and then I’m going to have to put a bunch of captions and I don’t even know what’s going on here! And how easy it is to get lost among so many subjects with a language that many of us have never had contact with. And he’s everywhere, all the time. [speaking German in the square] Fortunately, those who didn’t learn it with their family at home have the option of learning it at school, as it is a very popular language. Excuse me, late! Welcome How are you? All good? Pleasure. Give me a hug. I’m one for hugs. [Translation] Good afternoon, how are you, well? [Translation] Yes, well. [Translation] Today we are going to learn a little about personal presentation. My name is… [Translation] My name is Diogo. [Translation] I come from Brazil. [Translation] I come from Brazil. I am Brazilian? It’s easy! Now you can understand why the Germans always look angry. It’s difficult to say that! Nothing difficult. This is really difficult here. [Translation] Talk about the game? Next is number 5. Hm? Next is number 5. Where is it best to position it? Has number 5 already entered the court? Yes, he had just thrown it off the court. Ivoti is a city built by German immigrants. What we expect to find here are descendants of German immigrants. Anyway, we learned and saw this in all the architecture, gastronomy, customs. But one thing that many people don’t imagine is the largest Japanese colony in Rio Grande do Sul. Welcome to an Ivoti that few know about. A small Japan within a mostly German city where few families live, but which has a surprisingly unusual culture. How do I greet you? How do you speak? It’s just that I saw a lot of movies. Do you have to do it like this? How do you do it? [Speaking Japanese] Diogo. [Speaking Japanese] Do I have to say this? It’s easy to get lost here, but just as there are German classes, there are also Japanese classes. [Speaking Japanese, asking to get up and teaching how to do physical exercises] We study hiragana, first, and then we will study katakana, and then, little by little, introducing kanji – ideograms. How did the history of Japanese immigration happen? Right here in Ivoti, a land of German descendants? As my parents came after the Second World War, as in their country of origin, in Japan, it was already very difficult, so many left there. So they came here in the 1960s, passed through Panama, passed through Amazonas in the ports, right! Arriving in Rio Grande, that was a stop for them and from there they went to work as part of a partnership, so to speak, renting land to get a little money so they could then buy the land. Then, in the early 1970s, they came here. In other words, they stayed a little over ten years, migrating from city to city, until they got a… my parents managed to buy land here in the Japanese colony of Ivoti. And how did this culture adapt here in the region? Quite difficult, because in other cities it was like, how can I say, they were able to communicate a little more in Portuguese, right? Here in Ivoti, Dois Irmãos, it is more German, Germanic colonization was very strong, so, as there were Japanese settlers who practically did not speak Portuguese and settlers of German origin who also did not speak much Portuguese, communication was very difficult. Of course, this other part of the customs became much more difficult, which is mainly the customs of the food part. Nowadays, we also have several Japanese products for sale in supermarkets. At the time there wasn’t one, so they had to adapt. Many of the first immigrants still live in the Japanese colony of Ivoti, but some of them never learned Portuguese. [Translation] Beat number 1 into number 2. Are you going to beat number 1 into number 2? On the other hand, the following generations adapted better and created a bridge between the language that the family brought from Japan with what already existed in Brazil. Did you develop a dialect here in Brazil since immigration or is it Japanese from Japan? It’s really Japanese from Japan, but it’s an older, more archaic Japanese. Archaic, not so old, but here the vocabulary is being improved, it is changing, adapting. So, in 1998, I went to Japan and used the vocabulary that my grandparents used, my parents used. When we got there, everything was already modernized. People even looked at us, making fun of us, “oh, but that word is already very old”. So that’s it, he’s improving. Here in Japan, here in Brazil, it is not like that, the language that is spoken here and spoken there is still maintained, it is still understood, there is no change. There are the regional dialects that Japan has. Northern Japan practically doesn’t understand what Southern Japan says, because it has its own dialects, but here we still don’t have much of that. As most people in the Japanese colony speak Portuguese and I know you looked at the plate on the table, I decided to bring another short lesson on gastronomy, but this time Japanese. This is uramaki. URA is turned, it is opposite. MAKI is roll. So this one is going to be a turned sushi. Why? Because the algae will stay inside. Is this seriously? Uramaki, hosomaki, temaki. Why Temaki. MAKI is roll, roll up, TE is hand, rolled up in the hand. Hosomaki, HOSO is thin, MAKI is roll, a thin roll. Niguiri. Niguiri means making balls with your hands and then adding the filling. That’s why it’s niguiri. The Philadelphia, it’s the rice with sesame, the seaweed, this black part, and we cross it a little, because as we ‘re used to it, we go… then you add your filling, which is salmon. The salmon has to be very fresh salmon. It can’t smell like fish. The fish that is handled in sushi cannot have a strong fishy smell, which is already a somewhat outdated fish. Oh, here it is… right! And to no one’s surprise, once again I was asked to get my hands dirty… or fish in this case. We’re going to make a salmon temaki. We wet the tip of our finger a little so the rice doesn’t stick. I’m going to steal your work. The ones in the middle like that? Yeah, it just moistens like that. Then we get it here. And here. But I’m already lost here. Pressing here like that? Just spread it. It doesn’t need to be squeezed, it just spreads. How do… here I put as far as the meat? You can put it here like this. Here on this track, like this? Otherwise, your temaki will only have filling on top. For me, I would remove all the rice and leave just that here. Is this good or more? It could be a little more, otherwise it will be too skinny. I’m afraid it won’t close, that sometimes I fill the pastry a lot and it won’t close. No, pastel is something else, right? Now you’re going to take this part here, you’re going to make him come here, no, but just this. This one will make him stick here. “Make a cone”. That’s it, it doesn’t pull so much that it tears the algae. But that’s it. Bah, what a poor temaki I made! For those who have never done it, it’s fine. And now lick it here? You can lick it, you’ll eat it later. So how does it close here? I added cream cheese, or water. And it sticks. Oh my goodness, my first temaki. It was ugly, right, but… No one would expect to get it right the first time, certainly not me. Cutting salmon into sashimi is always easier. But here’s an important question: do you really know how to eat sushi? You have to hold him kind of sideways here, like this always, you can’t… always like this. And then you take the soy sauce, you take it… Do you know why these little dishes are small? For you to catch him here, who normally goes to eat the sushi, you give him a bath. I always do this. So you take it, let’s say, take it here, take it here, take it here and… It barely touches… Like that? No, it could be a little more. That could be more here. Then take the little plate so it doesn’t just drip. Then you taste the… How do you say “very good” in Japanese? Oishi. Oishi? Yes, Oishi. Don’t worry, it’s not over yet! What is that? It’s a gyoza. Then its filling is with pork, Chinese cabbage, Japanese chives and ginger and garlic. Bad and bad… Dip it in the sauce like this. Very little, right? I think I put in a lot. No, you can do it as you wish, to your liking. But then you can bite into it and dip the filling in the soy sauce. My God, how delicious is this! And it goes with pork. There are only people who don’t eat pork. I’ll get another one. He can. Everything you see was organized on purpose so we could show you what life is like in the Japanese colony. Around here, there are still sports being played, such as table tennis and gateball, which I even tried to play, but didn’t do very well. [Translation] Please pass the bow. Well, one point I managed to make. There are still typical dances and lots of music. One of the best ways to understand all this on your own is by participating in the popular fairs that take place in this space every last Sunday of each month. Anyone who knows knows that this is one of the most unique events you can participate in in Rio Grande do Sul, as well as a great opportunity to take a little piece of Japan home. [Translation] Welcome to the memorial, my name is Mateus Machado, I’m the guide and I’m going to
talk a little about Japan. Thank you, to you too. I don’t know what you said. In fact, he invited us to visit a rich memorial of Japanese culture full of items from Shiga Prefecture along with others brought by immigrants in the last century, but I’ll let you come and look at it on your own as it’s not a small thing or a little history. Well, Ivoti is that. Every place we go, we discover something new. Between Japanese, German, old and new and also discovering some peculiarities of the local cuisine, we learn that this city is much more than what it appears to be. Ivoti I will tell you is a true extra from the ordinary of this world that you think you know. And if you, at some point, want to try what I’m eating right now, the famous donut with cream and honey, I invite you to come to this town, because anywhere else in the world you eat it here, it won’t be the same. Itadakimasu! Ivoti is not that kind of place that we don’t take anything with us after visiting. Here, in addition to good food, drinks and incredible photos, we also take with us good memories of each moment and, above all, good stories from each of the people we meet along the way. Look, here’s a toast to both of us. A toast to this meeting. This, here in the square, with the retirees I talk about, with my friends, with my friends. I haven’t retired yet, but I’ll get there. He’s become my little guy now. And truth! In one of the last moments of our recording in Ivoti I had the pleasure of meeting Dona Odila – “Vovó Dide”, as she became known on social media after a certain video and gained thousands of followers just being herself. So, did you become famous, making videos here in Ivoti? Making video, my friend and I, we recorded one day. I was at her house, so she said “I’m going to the center on Monday”, I said I need to go too. I said “then let’s go together”, so I went to her house, I picked up the glasses, I brought tea and then we sat at this table here – this is my table, I just need to put my name here – then we went to have tea and the video of the tea went viral. Ivoti is like those stories that we don’t expect to discover, but that we take to tell others. Between flowers and half-timbering, German and Japanese accents, this city unfolds in layers of warming memories, flavors and encounters. It’s in the aroma of the rosca coming out of the oven, in the aged cachaça, in the dialect passed down from generation to generation, in the old wood that still sustains the present, and in the affection of those who offer tea in the square like those who offer their hearts. Ivoti does not impose herself, she reveals herself. And the more we look, the more it blooms. So, come, explore, but not just to see a city, but to feel a little piece of the world that is a true extra from the ordinary. Ivoti’s complete guide for you to explore the city in 1, 2 or 3 days is in the description. If you enjoyed exploring Ivoti, just wait until you visit Caçapava do Sul — a city recognized by UNESCO full of natural beauty and secrets. Discover everything from Farroupilha fortresses to abandoned mines and stories of ETs, in this place you would never imagine existed in Brazil