As the weather gets warmer, foods that are served cold and require little to no cooking become more appealing. In Japan the choice of such dishes goes way beyond a plain green salad. One of these is sashimi, a food that defines Japanese cuisine. While it's eaten year round along with its first cousin sushi, a cool plate of sashimi is especially appetizing on a sweltering hot day during a typical Japanese summer.

All kinds of food besides raw fish are eaten as sashimi, cut into thin slices and eaten dipped in soy sauce and condiments: tofu, yuba (bean curd skin), konnyaku (devil's tongue), mushrooms and various vegetables.

But the most controversial types may be raw animal meat, such as beef (gyūsashi), beef liver (rebasashi), horse (basashi), whale meat and goat. Even chicken, which is never eaten raw in Western cultures, is eaten as torisashi (completely raw) or toriwasa (blanched on the outside). Pork, on the other hand is never served raw, though you may see it blanched and chilled as "boiled pork sashimi."