Hey August!

 NB> :read !trans -b -no-ansi -t japanese "Strong like bull, smart like
 NB> tractor."
 NB> จจจจจจจจจจจจจจจจจจจจจ

 AA> The japanese one did not render.

Maybe so but at least your editor didn't grunge them like most 8-bit fido editors do.  I can't render them either given that there is no terminal based fonts for Japanese ... or Chinese for that matter.  With terminal fonts there is a 512 character limit as things stand today.  Far more than is needed for most languages.  To render Japanese a gui app with the right fonts will be needed.  I am not sure if there are any terminals in xorg that can handle CJK fonts but maybe.  I am guessing that Firefox might be a viable alternative.

I have a status line for vim running in a linux terminal that shows me the unicode when I place the cursor under the character in question.  For example it shows the first charater as U+96C4 which seems reasonable.  I could look them up at http://www.unicode.org/charts/ which does render the actual character in a pdf which is viewable on the linux terminal.  Given that I am left to ponder the possibility of a graphical interface for fidonet if and when this ever becomes a real issue.

Life is good,
Maurice

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