This section will take you through how to install a fresh Zen-Cart to get ready to work with languages packs like my Japanese Pack. When we set up the site we will choose UTF-8 encoding for all the pages. I will be using 1.3.8a Zen-Cart for this tutorial but it should work with future versions as well.  You can use this tutorial to help you install Zen-Cart for the Japanese pack. It should also work for other languages such as Chinese and Korean .

Having the WHOLE cart in UTF-8 will help eliminate a lot of problems right away. I have experimented with many different combinations of encoding and have found that if  UTF-8 is used for everything, then things work very well.  So say goodbye to IS08859-1 , EUC-JP and latin1_swedish_ci or whatever encodings you have been using. If you are not already aware, these various encodings control how your application (in this case Zen-Cart) and your browser work together to view the characters you are using in your target language.