Err, to point a fact:

Ruby itself does not support Unicode, in the way that Intel quad core
processors aren't really quad core.

Those are true statements, but they are misleading.

Ruby can mimic enough Unicode to get by in the areas where you need
it.  Otherwise the original Japanese author probably wouldn't have
been able to use it quite as much, and then it wouldn't have caught on
in Japan, and wouldn't have moved over to the US and Europe.

Heck, the fact that you can type this into vi and the two output lines
are the same should be enough to convince anyone.
#!/usr/bin/ruby
#an example shamelessly pulled from a ruby mailing list question
a="\xD7\x90"
b=""
puts a
puts b

Probably the fact that ruby's lack of Unicode support still lets you
do this is why there hasn't been more of a push for full blown
Unicode.

--Kyle