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
October - signs of improvement? November - more problems
There are still many delays and countries (most notably Canada) where services are very limited, but generally it seems that airmail is beginning to move at more like the normal speed.
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.
USA: All airmail services are now suspended, leaving only Yamato / UPS for speed, or surface for economy (at least on larger orders).
Canada: Service is extremely restricted - only untracked airmail "small packet".
The other good news is that we should have the new checkout implemented soon, so that you make a direct order in straightforward cases. (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
—August—
Or possibly "Coronavirus update five"...
And now it is August, so we have the annual O-bon holidays. Confusion reigns: because of the rescheduling of the Olympics, the public holidays this year were set after the calendars had been printed, (and we didn't notice) so orders from our suppliers are disrupted, while the manufacturers all take different days off, this year spread over weeks 2 and 3 of August. The result will be delays in getting stock, particularly of new puzzles.
More delays: The postal system is hugely disrupted worldwide, although there are big variations from country to country. The SE Asia direction seems least affected, so orders to Singapore or Australia are almost at normal delivery times. At the other end of the scale, we have had huge delays to North America in particular, with surface taking up to four months, and an airmail package reported as arriving after 11 weeks!
Confusion: well, it is certainly confusing, the wildly different selections of mail services which are operating or suspended. For a number of countries, particularly in South America, there is simply no available service at all, and then there is Canada to which everything except (untracked) airmail "small packet" is suspended, so no real economy (surface) and no express (EMS) either. I'm sorry, but it is taking me many times the normal effort just to provide the options in many cases.
The one bright spot on the horizon is that I am making progress on moving the shop to a separate .com domain; this includes a new checkout system to offer whatever options really are available for each destination. Where possible, you will be able to complete the checkout normally, but there are still cases in which we cannot calculate the shipping automatically, so it will still be manual. In particular, where EMS is suspended and we can offer express shipping by Yamato (UPS in at least some countries), the cost depends on the dimensions of the final package, and we can only provide an extremely vague guess based on the weight.
Anyway, please look out for an announcement about the new domain perhaps in September!
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!
