Converting Japanese from AppleWorks

I have some really old files with Japanese in them in AppleWorks format. If you try to just copy and past the text, it comes out as gibberish. However, there's a method to the madness of the gibberish, so you can convert it back to the original language. It's a bit of a hassle, but doable. (I'll bet this happens automatically when you use Apple's newer Pages to open AppleWorks files, but as I don't have pages I'm stuck with this method.)

1. Open the AppleWorks file and copy the text you want.
2. Make a new TextEdit file.
3. Select Format > Make Plain Text.
4. Paste the Japanese text into the file.
5. Save it as whatever name you like in the "Western (Mac OS Roman)" encoding.
6. Open that text file in Safari.
7. Select View > Text Encoding > Japanese (Shift JIS).
8. Copy the text in the Safari window, and paste it wherever you like.

You can do similar thing with other encodings; just change Japanese (Shift JIS) with the appropriate encoding for your language.