foreign characters

[obay]

Hi,

 

I have a problem with foreign characters. It doesn't get saved in the database as it's supposed to be. For example..

 

The text ひらがな is saved in the database as ã²ã‚‰ãŒãª .

 

- database table encoding is already UTF-8

- server and php already set up to be full UTF-8

 

As per my investigation...the query before being sent to database is correct, e.g.

 

UPDATE table SET column='ひらがな' WHERE blah blah

 

But it's saved incorrectly in the db. Also, i tried an

 

fwrite($fp, $text);

 

and what gets written is incorrect also.

 

I am very confused. Can somebody help?

 

Thanks

[obay]

I'm guessing there must be something wrong with how PHP sends the data to the database or the text file.