JDBC and unicode characters

Hi
  I'm having problems getting unicode characters from my MySQL database  into my Java program.  I'm using the Connector/J driver and MySQL  5.
  
  I have made some additions to the MySQL my.cnf file which have the  effect of allowing the unicode characters to display when running  queries in MySQL.
  
  But when running a query through Connector/J and Java the java output is ? wherever a unicode character is expected.
  
  I'm lost as to a solution.  
  
  Does anyone have an idea of how I can fix this?
  
  I have compiled the Java program with the utf8 character set flag but  this doesn't help.  I don' t think the problem relates to Java  since I can get normal Java programs that don't connect to a database  to output unicode characters without issue.  It's either a MySQL  characterset setting or a Connector/J setting.
  
 Send instant messages to your online friends http://uk.messenger.yahoo.com