About Me

Cafe Fazer, Helsinki, Finland

Name: Calliope

Age: 34

Nationality: American

Ethnicity: Mostly Greek

Adopted Hometown: Portland, Oregon 



I have been floating between the West Coast (LA and Portland) and Japan for the past several years.  Since a visit to the Ushiku Daibutsu in 2002, I became infatuated with Asia. I have a professional and academic background in apparel design, so I make a lot of my own clothes.

In June of 2013, I and moved to the mountains of rural Japan to make like Thoreau in Walden Pond...or not. During that time, I lived the quiet, serene life of a writer, and partied in the big city every chance I could get. 

After Japan, I went on a different journey, eating and caffinating my way through SE Asia. From fall of 2014 through Winter of 2015, I visited  8 countries in six months. 

Now I'm back in Portland, working as an independent consultant.

Candidanimal is my creative outlet. 
This is a platform for me to catalog my travels and style. 

On the cultural side, this blog is not intended to be an academic source on anything. Instead, this is meant to highlight my travels and experiences on our tiny planet. This is not so much a travel diary, nor is it a resource on traveling. Rather, I created this blog with the desire to paint an amusing portrait of our world and the places, people, food, and customs that make it so wonderful.

The style and fashion portion of the blog is really a visual catalog. I will not post lengthy paragraphs about the fashion industry, and I do not critique anyone's personal style.I will also not be posting photographs of runway collections or photo shoots, though you may occasionally see magazine clips that serve as inspiration for my designs. My blog is about personal style - mainly mine and my friends. It is a catalog of  my wardrobe, and a showcase for my designs.
 



Interested in living a non-conventional life? Wanna grab coffee in Manila or Seoul sometime? 
Let's talk!

sutekina (dot) bijin (at) gmail (dot) com