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The original was posted on /r/AmItheAsshole by /u/Actual_Priority5484 on 2023-09-15 04:01:00.

Backstory: (F20) have a Japanese name even though I am not ethnically Japanese (My mom is Korean & my dad is British). They met and fell in love while studying in Japan, and had me there after marrying. We lived there until I was 14 before moving to the States. This will be important later on.

Today a group of my roommate’s friends came over to study with her, and I happened to be in the living room when they arrived. They were introducing themselves to me and when I said my name (I have a pretty common Japanese girl name so it’s pretty hard to be mistaken about the origin) and one of the girls made a disgusted face and laughed at me saying that was so dumb. She said that she was Japanese American and I was “culturally appropriating her country as a white person.”

I tried to explain that I lived in Japan for a while and that was why but she kept insisting I was lying and that if I was telling the truth I would be able to speak the language. Since she put it like that I started talking to her in Japanese (Basically explaining where I lived there and asking which prefecture her parents were from, etc). She ends up stuttering through a sentence in an awkward manner before leaving in a huff.

Later my roommate told me I embarassed her by “pretending to be more Japanese than an actual Japanese person and appropriating the culture” and her friend expected an apology. My rooommate doesn’t think I did anything wrong but now I feel like of bad.

AITA?