Ihara Saikaku

The world is wide. I have been to all the provinces. And then I found out that in the town of Chikuzen there grows a radish so huge that it takes two people to carry it, threaded on a stick ... In Wakasa, there lives a nun, and she is two hundred years old. In Qatada lives a giant woman who is five sun and seven shaku tall. In Tamba, they built a temple where they worship a huge dried salmon that is a jo and two shaku long. In the land of Kaga, they keep the wallet of the overlord of hell, Emma. And in Saga, the former capital, women wear long-sleeved kimonos until they’re forty. If you think about these miracles, you will be convinced that people are real shape-shifters, and there is no such curiosity that would not be found in this world.

Tales from the Provinces, seventeenth century