It works for me. 
#!/usr/bin/perl
use warnings;
use strict;
use feature qw{ say };

use Encode qw{ decode };

my %utf8 = (
    japanese => "\xe6\x84\x9b",
    chinese  => "\xe5\x92\x8c\xe5\xb9\xb3",
    spanish  => "\x61\x6c\x65\x67\x72\xc3\xad\x61");

binmode STDOUT, ':encoding(UTF-8)';
for my $language (keys %utf8) {
    my $decoded = decode('UTF-8', $utf8{$language});
    say join ', ', $language, length $decoded, $decoded;
}

[download]

Output (on a UTF-8 terminal): 

chinese, 2, 和平
japanese, 1, 愛
spanish, 7, alegrķa
map{substr$_->[0],$_->[1]||0,1}[\*||{},3],[[]],[ref qr-1,-,-1],[{}],[sub{}^*ARGV,3]

In reply to Re: Encode::decode issue with string by choroba
in thread Encode::decode issue with string by Anonymous Monk

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