In the April '93 issue of the Forum Newsletter, Jan wrote about the general concerns involved when dealing with DBCS--Double-Byte Character Sets. The following article expands upon that discussion by addressing some background material necessary for localizing and internationalizing for the Japanese language. This discussion will be continued further in future articles. Here is the scenario: You've decided to commit to the Japanese market by internationalizing and/or localizing for Japan. You've heard horror stories like the one about localizing Lotus 1-2-3 into Japanese--that it cost US$5 million and a considerable amount of time and effort, not to mention pain. Well, it can truly be a nightmare, but the nightmare can be unnecessary if you understand what you are attempting to do.