Can't get Unicode to work (???'s)... feel like I've tried everything.

[Dan Tasse]

Hi folks,
I'm trying to store text in many languages in a MySQL 5.0 database. I've written some Java methods that connect to the database and execute strings of SQL on it (to load data, etc). Whenever I use non-Latin characters, they turn into ?'s.

I tried "set names utf8", "set character set utf8", and "set character_set_server=utf8".
When I run:
show variables like 'char%';
I get:

+--------------------------+-----------------------------------------+
| Variable_name | Value |
+--------------------------+-----------------------------------------+
| character_set_client | utf8 |
| character_set_connection | utf8 |
| character_set_database | utf8 |
| character_set_filesystem | binary |
| character_set_results | utf8 |
| character_set_server | utf8 |
| character_set_system | utf8 |
| character_sets_dir | /usr2/local/mysql/share/mysql/charsets/ |
+--------------------------+-----------------------------------------+

and when I run:
select character_set_name from information_schema.columns where table_name='phrase' and column_name='phrase_text';
I get:
+--------------------+
| character_set_name |
+--------------------+
| utf8 |
+--------------------+

I can't think of what else to try. Any ideas?
Thanks in advance for your help.
Dan