Japanatron Logo
Mojibake (aka "junk text") is a horrible affliction that most computing in Japanese have encountered at some point.  Here are some simple fixes that I use with Microsoft Windows and Outlook.  These instructions are written with Windows 7 / Outlook 2010 in mind.

SOLUTION 1 - Mojibake in Received Email

Try re-selecting the encoding in Outlook.
1. Open the mail.
2. Click Actions, Other Actions, Encoding, and choose "Japanese (auto select)." Even if it's already chosen, please click it again.

SOLUTION 2 - Mojibake in Received Email
Convert the email to plain text. Sometimes the email is actually in plain text format, but Outlook misinterprets it as HTML (or it's converted in transit), causing the mojibake.
1. Highlight the message and click forward.
2. Click format text --> plain text. This will convert the message to plain text format, potentially fixing the encoding information.
3. Forward the email to yourself.
4. Try SOLUTION 1 above if the plain text email still appears as mojibake.

SOLUTION 3 - Mojibake in General
If you often encounter mojibake problems in other places / applications, try changing your system locale to Japanese. This requires admin privileges.
1. Start, Control Panel, Region and Language.
2. Administrative Tab, Change System Locale.
3. Change to Japanese. You will have to restart your PC.

Related Articles

Windows - How to Run Add Print...

I had an end user that wanted to install their home printer drivers on their office laptop.  I took remote control of their PC, but to my chagrin the user lacke...

Roku - Blocking Hard-Coded DNS

The Roku media player has Google's free public DNS (8.8.8.8) hard-coded into it.  This is great for DNS redundancy, but totally sucks if you use an unblock serv...

Windows - Install Fonts Via Co...

I found this awesome Windows powershell script that allows you to install fonts via the command line.  This is very convenient for mass deployment.$ssfFonts = 0...

Kingston USB Drive Not Working...

I upgraded to MacOS El Capitan and to my chagrin my Kingston USB drive no longer works.  I get some stupid "Unable to start DTXX application" or "ERR_COULD_NOT_...