When I use WordPress' recommended method of querying the database $wpdb->get_row($sql) the results are NOT UTF-8 encoded. However, when I run the exact same query manually mysql_fetch_assoc($sql) the results ARE properly UTF-8 encoded.
To put a finer point on it:
using $wpdb->get_row($sql) returns:
ç§ã¯æ—¥æœ¬ã®å›žã—ã¦ã„ã‚‹ã¨æ€ã†...ç§ã¯æœ¬å½“ã«ãã†æ€ã†ã€
using mysql_fetch_assoc($sql) returns:
私は日本の回していると思う...私は本当にそう思う。
Any clue how to have wpdb return UTF-8 encoded results?