나오미 in korea

Chiaksan’s sharp ridges are fuzzy with bare trees, like a young boy’s buzzcut. It’s winter, which means I have to go to the bloody gym.

But something’s wrong. The place is empty. No woman on the massage machine jiggling her hips. No one offering me boiled potatoes and eggs to munch on. No people in designer outfits standing around the back-stretching platform. No cheery “Good morning Naohmee!” from Kyoung-hee, the perky gym owner. Gym owners are the same from country to country. It appears the effect of endorphins is, at least, universal.

I go upstairs to warm up, puzzling over the lack of bodies. It’s even stranger upstairs. No music. No heart-skipping beat to get you pumping. No Koreanised remix of gangsta rap and 80’s aerobics anthems.

“No ho bitch niggaz gonna fu-fu-fu-fu-fu-fu-fu – get on your feet let’s move it, move it!”

“Hana, dool, set, net…” A woman counts off, echoing through the hall. Thirty Korean women are grunting it out on the floor, synchronised in calisthenics of alarming complexity and speed. I’ve stumbled onto the 10am yoga class that Kyoung-hee has been trying to get me to join for three months.

Self-consciously, I get onto the treadmill in the booming silence and start it up. It whines terribly and I’m acutely aware of my saggy-bottomed trackies in full view. Kyoung-hee pauses her workout and runs downstairs. An instant later Deja Vu booms into the room.

“Face down ass up that’s the way we like to fuck!” 

She’s turned it on just for me.

Or maybe not. The housewives stand up and start bouncing on their toes to the rhythm, slapping their hands off their thighs and reaching for the sky like kindy kids imagining themselves young saplings.  It’s hard to keep the grin off my face as I jog on, the dumpy housewives shaking their booty to Deja Vu.

The song morphs into ABBA, the women disperse, chatting and mopping their faces. Kyoung-hee comes over, pinches the flab on my stomach, and tuts.

“Naomi, more running, more walking!” She hands me a towel and a hard-boiled egg in a paper cup.

There’s no end to the wonders in a Korean health club.