Welcome to the Imaginatorium Shop, now in our nineteenth year!
From our base in Japan (here!), we send jigsaw puzzles anywhere in the world. Most of the hundreds of puzzles we have in stock feature oriental themes, but the high quality of Japanese-made puzzles (exquisite printing, really solid card stock, and clean cutting) also makes "reverse imports" highly desirable — puzzles of Peanuts, Disney, and lots of other Western characters popular in Japan. In general, if a puzzle is available in Japan, we can get it for you within a week or so - see the special orders page.
Covid-19: Shop status updates
Update 22 December - more problems
Canada: All services suspended.
USA: EMS service resumes, so now EMS or Yamato/UPS for express, and surface for economy (at least on larger orders).
Australia: All airmail services are now suspended, leaving only Yamato / UPS for speed, or surface for economy (at least on larger orders). Recent news suggests that air passenger services from Japan to Australia are reopening, so it is possible that normal airmail will be restored in the relatively near future, but we simply do not know.
Asia, Australasia, and Europe: please be prepared for extra delay, but we can hope for almost normal service. Note that EMS rates to Europe are subject to a surcharge (included in our quote) for the forseeable future.
The other good news is that the new checkout is now working; please watch for announcements. (But where Yamato / UPS / Ta-Q-Bin is an option, we can only ever calculate the shipping manually.) For the time being, please use the form on the checkout page to make a request for puzzles, and indicate whether you are looking for speed or economy.
- Contents page - full shop guide, including navigation links at the top of each page
- Bargains! - reduced prices on selected puzzles
- Top ten - best-selling puzzles
- Last chance! - only one left of each of these puzzles...
- Artists - a complete list
- Special orders - when you can't find the puzzle you are looking for
- Missing pieces - help when you have the puzzle but can't find a piece!
(Puzzle of the month suspended)
Calendar puzzles for 2022
Latest additions
- (August 2021) No more new puzzles here! We hope to complete the move to the new shop (imaginatorium.com) in September, so new puzzle announcements will be waiting there...
New One Piece puzzles
More craziness – take the torture challenge in 300 small pieces! And let's learn Japanese...
Chit-chat
—December—
Our new Imaginatorium Shop site at the .com domain is now operating: try this link: New Shop. We are still in the final testing stages, and there may be teething problems, but the main bit of progress is the new checkout: this is operating, so in most cases you can choose the shipping and pay online, without having to ask me for a quote. The shipping options have changed: the SAL economy air rates are all suspended indefinitely, but we have added surface as the new economy option for larger orders. Where EMS is suspended (USA, Australia, in particular), the only fast option is Yamato / UPS, and for this we can never calculate the shipping automatically, so you will still have to ask for a quote.
Eventually all pages on the old site will automatically redirect to the corresponding new page, so you do not have to worry about bookmarks.
Email addresses
Currently our email address is shop@imaginatorium.org, but this will move progressively to shop@imaginatorium.com. Please make sure you can receive our emails; you may need to fiddle with settings in your mail software to whitelist us.
Ongoing shipping problems
The big problem at present is simply unpredictability; everything varies country to country and case by case. If you are lucky, delivery times may be more or less normal; but sometimes not. The big problem regions are North America and Australia, where only extremely restricted services are operating.
And occasionally things go wrong on a horrendous scale. Mid-July, a customer in Denmark ordered some puzzles by surface. Accepting the need for patience (which sort of comes naturally to most puzzle fans!) this is very economical once you get to 3 or 4 kgs (three or four 1000-piece puzzles). But at the end of November, four and a half months later, there was still no sign of the puzzles, so we requested a Post Office investigation. The tracking system does not show progress while in international transit, so after Kawasaki port, the next event is arrival at the port in the destination country. But the Post Office internally obviously has ways of knowing where each container of packages is.
The head of our local Post Office is very helpful, and phoned me back with the following story.
It appears the package (pallet, container, whatever) was loaded on a ship in Kawasaki in July, and this ship set sail for Vladivostok. But on the way, it had to call somewhere in South Korea, and this is where everything went wrong (and the story gets a bit vague); it couldn't be unloaded, loaded, or docked or undocked, or something. The latest is that it is expected to arrive finally in Vladivostok mid-December. Then trans-Siberian to Moscow and on to Denmark. Normally the train takes about a week to Moscow, but who knows how long it might take now...
Read more of these blog entries
- Best-selling puzzles: Top ten.
- Browse the complete list of artists.
- How to display puzzles on the wall without needing to buy a frame: Murals!
- Despite the FAQ, we can supply frames by special order: more information.
- Yes, we sell glue! Yanoman puzzle glue (100 g), 180 yen Add to basket (Standard PVA (polyvinyl alcohol) puzzle glue - almost all puzzles include glue, but when you need extra, one of these bottles should be enough for two or three 1000-piece puzzles. Note that this will not work for the "Crystal" translucent puzzles made of plastic, which need no glue.)
- Manufacturer details:
Apollo -
Appleone -
Artbox -
Beverly -
Cuties -
Epoch -
Road -
Tenyo -
Yanoman -
more historical info
- Any other problems or just questions - please ask!
About ordering
The details under each puzzle show the price, with approximate equivalents in US dollars, euros, and pounds sterling.
Click "Buy this puzzle" to go straight to the checkout with a single puzzle, or "Add to basket" to carry on shopping. At the checkout, you can select the shipping method, then choose how you are going to buy the puzzle(s). If you have any questions or problems, just use the forms provided to ask, and we'll get back to you. Once we receive confirmation of a payment, we aim to despatch puzzles by the next working day.
You do not need to create a PayPal account in order to make a payment; the total is in yen, but you will be charged in your 'home currency', and you will be able to check the final amount before confirming payment.
You can pay by major credit card, eCheck in the US,
and bank transfer in many countries.
As you can see in the pile of puzzles on the left, most of the writing on the box is in Japanese, so we also include printed details with each shipment. Click these thumbnails for descriptions...
(Sorry! You can't see the "pile of boxes", because your browser does not support the functions necessary.)
Finally...
The Shop is only part of my website, the Imaginatorium - I hope you will have time to explore some of the other pages!
