MySQL usually sucks for Unicode searches. They have tuned their partial text search for 4 character words or more – certainly, not what the doctor ordered when it comes to the normally 2 or 3 character asiatic language set. However I ran into something interesting today.
SELECT *
FROM `ads`
WHERE `description` LIKE ‘%経%’
LIMIT 0 , 30

This seems to work perfectly. Hrm. I just need to fix the damn classified section and I’m set.