title: How do I convert Unicode escape sequences to text in PHP?
body: <p>I have this Unicode sequence: <code>\u304a\u306f\u3088\u3046\u3054\u3056\u3044\u307e\u3059</code>. How do I convert it into text?</p>
  
  <pre><code>$unicode = '\u304a\u306f\u3088\u3046\u3054\u3056\u3044\u307e\u3059';
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>I tried:</p>
  
  <pre><code>echo $utf8-decode(unicode);
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>and I tried:</p>
  
  <pre><code>echo mb_convert_encoding($unicode , 'US-ASCII', 'UTF-8');
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>and I tried:</p>
  
  <pre><code>echo htmlentities($unicode , ENT_COMPAT, "UTF-8");
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>but none of these functions convert the sequence into the corresponding Japanese text.</p>