Urashima's Box

The Karakuri Creation Group from Hakone, Japan is very well known for their fabulous and superb quality wooden puzzles and puzzle boxes. Equally well-known is that every year in the weeks leading up to Christmas, they will ship out their "Christmas Presents" to those who have joined the "Karakuri Club" and pre-ordered puzzles from a panel of designers, as early as the beginning of the year. 

The puzzler selects the designer(s) of his choice, but would not know what sort of puzzle he/she will receive from their selected designer(s) until it arrives. It's a "surprise" to say the least! Not a cheap affair as well considering each puzzle is about US$100/- and there are usually an average of about 8 presents available per year. A full set will set you back about US$800/-. 

For the rest of the year, the Karakuri Group designers release various designs and these puzzles can range anywhere from US$125/- to well over US$1,000/- a pop. Expensive would be somewhat of an understatement, but the design concept, theme, craftsmanship and attention to detail is simply incredible. Take a look around their site and you would know what I mean. From a puzzling perspective, some puzzles are pretty simple and provide little challenge for seasoned puzzlers but some designers like Hiroshi Iwahara create extremely challenging pieces.   

Aside from exquisitely crafted puzzles, Karakuri also retails wooden puzzle kits. The one shown here is the Urashima's Box, which I purchased during IPP33 in Tokyo several years ago. I have had it for quite a while and totally forgotten about it until recently.

The kid is made of plywood and while there is nothing exotic about plywood, the pieces are very well cut and precise. It has even got a nice woody scent to it. It costs only about 2,000 Yen (US$17.50) but the quality is very good.

The kit comes un-assembled of course and this one has 16 pieces including the string. When fully assembled, it is a trick opening box. everything you need is in the kit except glue and here I used an inexpensive wood glue called Wessbond White Glue which dried quickly and gave good results. Smears and stains were easily cleaned off with a damp tissue. There is no need to go for epoxy and other fancy glues for this sort of work.

Although the instructions are all in Japanese, the diagrams are easy enough to understand for the assembly of the box and no translation needed. It took me no more than half an hour or so to glue all the parts together and another 6-7 hours or so for the glue to dry properly. The finished product was strong, sturdy and nice to look at, especially with the ribbon tied.

I don't think I need to explain the object of the box here and from photos i think you can quite guess how the mechanics of the puzzle works. So if you can't afford or don't want to shell out the dollars for the ala carte puzzles on their Michelin-starred menu, you can still own a Karakuri puzzle...get a kit! They are great fun and relatively easy to build and will astound your non-puzzling friends for sure!