Japanese Character Use in Windows, TOAD, sqlplus

Resolving The Problem

To modify Windows to view Japanese characters, the Windows 2000 CD is required (the English version will do).

To switch your system LCID (locale ID) to Japanese on Windows 2000
Note: This does not change UI language but is required to read/write strings encoded in the Shift-JIS character set.

1. Select Control Panel -> Regional Setting -> General tab
2. Check 'Japanese' in 'Language settings for the system'
3. Click the 'Set default' button (lower left corner), select 'Japanese' and click 'OK'
4. After prompt, insert Windows 2000 CD followed and Restart.

To set NESTLING environment variable for Windows:
(This is necessary to do perform SQL operations at the Windows command prompt or in Toad to convert UTF-8 string to Shift JIS (SJIS).)

Note: To read/write Japanese in Toad, this needs to be set at system level.

For using sqlplus at Windows command prompt:

'set NLS_LANG=American_America.JA16SJIS'


At Windows system level to use sqlplus, Toad or other SQL tools:

1. Select Control Panel -> System -> Advanced tab -> Environment Variable -> System Variable
2. Add 'NLS_LANG' and set its value to 'American_America.JA16SJIS'.


To change Toad's display font to Japanese:

1. In Toad, select View -> Option -> Data Grids - Visual -> Fonts Grid.
2. Select "MS P Gothic", which is the Japanese Windows default, or one with Unicode in font name such as 'Arial Unicode MS'.
3. Set script to 'Japanese' in lower right corner of font dialog.


To test to see if you can see Japanese string in sqlplus:

Access qosg1, do 'sqlplus island17/island17@qosg1' and query like 'select unique last_name from yfs_person_info'. You should see Kanji characters on the last couple of rows.