刺身
While sashimi is often assumed to refer to
only to
raw fish, the literal meaning is simply "sliced meat".
Non-fish types of sashimi are quite popular in Japan,
especially the Tokyo classic bazashi, which
is very thinly sliced frozen raw horse meat served over
a bed of ice. When still frozen, it simply melts
in your mouth, but if it thaws too much, it becomes a
soggy, stringy, horse-flavored mess.
Whale meat (which looks and tastes much more like
red meat than fish) is also often eaten the same
way and is known as kujirazashi.
While less often spotted on menus, pretty much any
other
type of meat is also considered
fair game. In the West, chicken
is generally not considered something you can eat raw due to the danger of salmonella,
but this does not seem to be a problem in Japan and
I have eaten chicken sashimi
(although I can't say I like it). Bear, deer
and wild boar are also eaten as sashimi. The one
notable exception is pork, probably due to the fear
of trichinosis, and because it tastes bad when
raw.
And if all this isn't exciting enough, you could always
sample some ikizukuri, which is the same as
sashimi except that your meal is still alive
when you eat it. (I would not recommend trying
this with a cow. Or a whale, for that matter.)