This is basically URL decoding to the decimal code but nothing in PHPworks how you'd expect it. Here are online tools to verify and check your work, it's important when querying databases with non-English characters: http://yehg.net/encoding/index.php# http://meyerweb.com/eric/tools/dencoder/ http://www.codetable.net/decimal/65398 Japanese: http://symbolcodes.tlt.psu.edu/bylanguage/japanesechartkatakana.html Charat code for PHP:........