storing japanese in mysql (or pgsql)

(I posted this to another list yesterday without response, so if it looks familiar, that's why.) Hi. I'm working on a small study aid for myself (and anyone else that wants to use it) and I could really use the ability to store Japanese characters in a MySQL or pgsql db. Right now I've created a very large array. What I'd like to do is have a form that will allow me to add new characters whenever needed. So far my attempts at this have failed. It always seems that the extended characters get turned into their html entity equivalents before they are inserted into the db. I'm using euc-jp as the character set. I'm pretty much lost with this. Anyone have experience with this that they'd like to share? (on or off list is fine.) Thanks, Chris.