Zauner fully immersed herself in the culture. “It was meaningful in ways that I never even anticipated,” she says. “It was really wonderful because I got to be close to my family, what little family I have left, and I got to make friends that have similar cultural backgrounds.”
It was a transformative experience that brought her closer to her late mother. Month after month, as she gained a firmer grasp on the language, she was able to better communicate with her only aunt, her mother’s older sister, and learn more about her mother. “I think when someone dies, the only way that you have of feeling close to them, because you can’t create new memories with each other anymore, is getting to learn new memories that other people have with them. It’s kind of the closest you can get to feeling like you’re spending time with them again.”
She also began ruminating on her follow-up to Crying in H Mart. “While I was there, I just kept a diary, and so I kept a diary for 10 minutes every day for the last two years, and that has 500,000 words of material.” Zauner also found her mother’s diary from early adulthood and started to translate it. “I think on tour I’ll start kind of rereading through all of those journals and editing them and sort of finding the arc of the narrative and putting that together this year slowly.”
It’s not lost on Zauner that the release of For Melancholy Brunettes (& sad women) arrives during a particularly fraught time, politically and culturally, especially for many women. When I ask how she remains grounded, she offers a seed of hope. “I just try to be a good person, and I think my work has always been something that’s been very helpful for me. Sometimes it’s hard not to get fatalistic and want to give up completely, so I think that trying to be involved with things that feel within my control and trying to make an impact in at least small ways is centering,” she says.
In the year ahead, Zauner will be confronted with many things that are out of her control as Japanese Breakfast embarks on a tour in support of the album. Starting next month, in the California desert on the Coachella stage, the days will get longer—and louder—than Zauner has been used to as of late. She’s been mentally and physically preparing for this upcoming endurance test, taking vocal lessons, devoting time to guitar practice, and hitting the gym. “It’s kind of getting all my callouses back and getting physical stamina back to get into fighting form,” she says.
Yet as Zauner’s star continues to rise, she’s careful not to fly too close to the sun, taking care of practical touring matters that bring her right back down to earth. “I’m strategizing what to put on the rider and if I should bring a rice cooker on tour,” she says.
