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)

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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.