Show the character set and the collation of your MySQL tables

To show the collation of your tables you have to login to the MySQL console and execute SHOW TABLE STATUS FROM database;

mysql> SHOW TABLE STATUS FROM test;
+-------------+--------+---------+------------+------+----------------+-------------+-----------------+--------------+-----------+----------------+---------------------+---------------------+------------+-----------------+----------+----------------+---------+
| Name        | Engine | Version | Row_format | Rows | Avg_row_length | Data_length | Max_data_length | Index_length | Data_free | Auto_increment | Create_time         | Update_time         | Check_time | Collation       | Checksum | Create_options | Comment |
+-------------+--------+---------+------------+------+----------------+-------------+-----------------+--------------+-----------+----------------+---------------------+---------------------+------------+-----------------+----------+----------------+---------+
| test1       | MyISAM |      10 | Dynamic    |    3 |            121 |         364 | 281474976710655 |         2048 |         0 |              4 | 2011-06-13 22:09:36 | 2011-06-13 22:09:36 | NULL       | utf8_general_ci |     NULL |                |         |
| attachments | InnoDB |      10 | Compact    |    0 |              0 |       16384 |               0 |        16384 |   3145728 |              1 | 2011-08-17 13:46:48 | NULL                | NULL       | utf8_general_ci |     NULL |                |         |
+-------------+--------+---------+------------+------+----------------+-------------+-----------------+--------------+-----------+----------------+---------------------+---------------------+------------+-----------------+----------+----------------+---------+
2 rows in set (0.05 sec)

To show the default character set of a table you have to login to the MySQL console and execute SHOW CREATE TABLE table;

mysql> SHOW CREATE TABLE foobar;
+---------+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Table   | Create Table                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                     |
+---------+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| answers | CREATE TABLE `foobar` (
  `id` int(11) NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT,
  `name` varchar(255) DEFAULT NULL,
  `timestamp` timestamp NOT NULL DEFAULT CURRENT_TIMESTAMP ON UPDATE CURRENT_TIMESTAMP,
  PRIMARY KEY (`id`)
) ENGINE=MyISAM AUTO_INCREMENT=5 DEFAULT CHARSET=utf8 |
+---------+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
1 row in set (0.00 sec)

Please note that this is just the default character set of this table. Each column can have a different character set.