> The problem is the ML and the forced "Plain
> Text" requirement.=A0 That can't handle Japanese
> text it seems
> (that's what I was trying to quote earlier).

That might be part of it, but I have been trying to talk to people using ka
nji text for years on Yahoo, and it doesn't matter which part you use if it
 has to go through the mail system.  Kanji comes out as single "?"s per cha
racter, unless you use HTML "&" encoding, and I don't have an accurate prog
ram to do the conversion.  I usually end up sending a small .gif or unicode
 compliant text file in the attachments.
Unfortunately (unless something changed) attachments aren't allowed on ANY 
ML system I use... ^_^
Now, I know people in Japan must be doing just fine, but I'm guessing they 
have a completely different interface, since mail from a few Japan based re
tailers (with Yahoo accounts) always ends up as ASCII hash when it gets sen
t to me...  though most of the images manage to get through untouched.=0A
=0A=0A