unicode strings

[kmcculler]

I am trying to read in a string from a text file. The program works fine in ascii text, but I need to convert it to handle Japanese text. I converted my text file (created by Access) into a unicode, but when perl reads it in it places a strange character at the begenning of the string and then a space after each western character. I've tried several solutions, but nothing has worked yet, if anyone has a solution please let me know.
Kris