OK. I tried that, but it didn't help.
Here's the frustrating situation now.
I want to use the same database with two different interfaces.
Right now, the web interface is in UTF-8. I can input, retrieve and display Japanese charcters this way, but they seem to be stored as nonsense-looking characters.
The Qt interface that I'm working on can input, retrieve and display Japanese characters, and they seem to be stored as Japanese characters too, rather than as nonsense-style stuff.
Unfortunately, if I use the Qt interface to retrieve data that was inputted with the web interface, it displays as nonsense. If I use the web interface to retrieve data that was stored with the Qt interface, it displays as question marks.
The Qt data at least looks correct in the database (viewed with phpMyAdmin). I thought maybe if I could convert all the data to be like that, it would be good, but firstly, I don't know how to do that, and secondly, as I said, when I try to display that data in a browser, it comes out as question marks, so...
Any ideas??? [frustrated or confused smilie goes here]