unicode_string = u'\u3042\u308a\u304c\u3068\u3046'
print unicode_string
ありがとう
print len(unicode_string)
5
file_path = r'/home/johann/Desktop' #Adjust as required (e.g. r'C:\documents')
import os
os.chdir(file_path)
my_string = open('myfile.txt', 'rb').read().rstrip()
print len(my_string)
15
my_unicode_string = my_string.decode('utf-8')
print len(my_unicode_string)
5
import codecs
my_new_string = codecs.open('myfile.txt', 'rb', 'utf-8').read().rstrip()
print len(my_new_string)
5
print 'this is a string'[0]
t
print 'this is a string'[0:4]
this