VARCHAR automatically changes to VARBINARY
I'm guessing you have binary as your default character set for the server and/or for the database. You probably want to change this to prevent the same thing happening next time you create a table. 

You can check by running: SHOW VARIABLES LIKE 'character_set_server'; and SHOW CREATE DATABASE the_database_name;

If the database doesn't have a character set, then the server character set will be used.

You can change the database character set with a command like:

ALTER DATABASE the_database_name CHARACTER SET = 'utf8';


The server character set can be set with a command like:

SET character_set_server = 'utf8';


(Use SET GLOBAL ... for the setting to be made outside of the current session. Or you can set this in your config file so it survives a restart.)