title: using javascript, how can I count a mix of asian characters and english words
body: <p>I need to take a string of mixed Asian characters (for now, assume only Chinese kanji or Japanese kanji/hiragana/katakana) and "Alphanumeric" (i.e., Enlgish, French), and count it in the following way:</p>
  
  <p>1) count each Asian CHARACTER as 1;
  2) count each Alphanumeric WORD as 1;</p>
  
  <p>a few examples:</p>
  
  <p>株式会社myCompany = 4 chars + 1 word = 5 total
  株式会社マイコ = 7 chars</p>
  
  <hr>
  
  <p>my only idea so far is to use:</p>
  
  <pre><code>var wordArray=val.split(/\w+/);
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>and then check each element to see if its contents are alphanumeric (so count as 1) or not (so take the array length). But I don't feel that's really very clever at all and the text being counted might be up to 10,000words, so not very quick.</p>
  
  <p>Ideas?</p>