Welcome to Japan, Taylor Swift fans. Please remain seated while you cheer.

Taylor mania has landed in Tokyo. But the enthusiasm of some Swifties who came with her clashed with local sensibilities.

Thousands of visitors from across Asia and beyond have flooded into the Japanese capital as Taylor Swift performs at the Tokyo Dome for four nights this week. The problem, as some domestic concertgoers see, is that these foreign fans don't share the rather subdued Japanese approach to attending a show.

In a post on platform Xwrote one Japanese VIP ticket holder that even paying 130,000 yen – about $870 – and a seat in the third row would not guarantee a clear view, since so many foreign fans had stood up and rushed to the front.

“It's too sad,” the post said. “It's crazy that if you follow the rules you can't watch it.”

While Japanese people are praised abroad for their impeccable behavior at football matches and other sporting events, their exacting standards at home can make them hostile to visitors. Another message on Xaccompanied by a short video in which audience members raised their cellphones to capture the scene on stage, complaining that “there were many foreigners who could not respect decency.”

The grumbling is in some ways a microcosm of Japan's mixed reception to the international tourists who have helped revive the country's economy, the world's third largest, from the pandemic. More than 25 million people visited Japan last year, nearly 80 percent of the number who visited in 2019, according to the Japan National Tourism Organization.

As visitor numbers rebounded last year, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida raised concerns that “there are concerns that in some areas and at certain times of the day, excessive crowds and poor etiquette may impact the lives of local residents and reduce traveler satisfaction. ”

Chiharu Nakayoshi, 31, an occupational therapist, was thinking about etiquette as she attended Ms. Swift's concert on Wednesday. She said her enjoyment of the performance was undermined by the behavior of non-Japanese concertgoers who left their assigned seats and blocked her view in the VIP section.

“I bought the most expensive ticket, thinking it would be a rare opportunity to see Taylor at her most glorious,” Ms. Nakayoshi wrote in a direct message on X. “But when the day broke, it turned out to be lawless. .”

Other Japanese fans pointed out social media reported that domestic spectators could also behave badly, citing an open-air summer music festival in Osaka where fans groped a singer's breasts on stage.

A message characterized the “discrimination against foreigners” who came to Tokyo to see Ms. Swift as “really disgusting.”

For many international visitors, many from China, Southeast Asia or the United States, the concerts were a connecting experience.

Thousands of Chinese Swifties joined WeChat messaging groups to exchange tips on scoring tickets, form carpools to travel outside Tokyo and provide shopping suggestions, said Yuqing Mai, 23, a university administrator in Canada who stopped in Tokyo on Wednesday to to attend the first concert. her way to see family in China for the Lunar New Year.

Ms Mai said she knew of at least eight WeChat groups with 500 members each dedicated to helping Swifties traveling to Japan. She said many fans had expressed interest in traveling to other parts of Japan while in the country for the concerts.

“Many fans arrive in Japan early or stay a few days longer,” she wrote in an email.

With such concertgoers booking hotels and trips to Kyoto or other destinations, Ms. Swift's four-night performances in Tokyo could be lucrative for the domestic tourism industry.

Mariel Milner, 32, director of communications strategy at a New York advertising agency, and Lindsay Milner Katz, 31, sales director at a New York media company, said they initially did not plan to visit their sister, Dianne Milner, this year. 34, who works in Tokyo as a lawyer for Hewlett-Packard.

But when Dianne managed to get lottery slots to buy three VIP tickets for one of the dates in Tokyo for about $350 each – with the favorable exchange rate, much cheaper than such seats would have cost in the United States – the sisters decided to fly to book to Japan.

“We said, 'What is a flight? And we can stay with our sister,” Mariel Milner said when she called from a hotel room in Kyoto, where the women had been visiting with their husbands around the clock before returning to Tokyo for the final concert on Saturday. “So we rationalized it because it's once in a lifetime.”

Similarly, Monika Gami, who moved to Tokyo from New Jersey with her family last summer, had two of her husband's cousins ​​in town to visit Ms. Swift. But “I'm not sure I would consider visiting us,” Ms. Gami said. “Their trip here was planned before we got here.”

The excitement of having Ms. Swift in Tokyo led to reports about what the star herself did with her time in Japan.

Kiyoshi Kawasaki, owner of Turret Coffee in Tokyo's Tsukiji Ward, said Ms. Swift had visited his store on Monday, but he wasn't sure who it was until he saw photos of Ms. Swift in a Instagram post from the Japanese edition of Vogue.

Mr. Kawasaki said he could have sworn that Ms. Swift had been queuing for coffee with Selena Gomez, a fellow pop star; Brittany Mahomes, whose husband, Patrick Mahomes, is a Kansas City Chiefs quarterback and teammate of Ms. Swift's boyfriend, Travis Kelce; and another woman.

Representatives for Ms. Gomez said she was not in Tokyo. And a spokesman for the Chiefs, who will face the San Francisco 49ers in the Super Bowl this weekend, did not respond to an email asking whether Ms. Mahomes was in Japan.

On Friday evening, one Swiftie, Jazmine Sydney Tanay, 23, a loyal fan for 16 years who flew in from the Philippines that morning, had her wish come true in more ways than one.

As she munched on a rice ball from a food stand in the dome before the concert, she said she hoped Ms. Swift would tell the audience directly about her next album.

When the show started, Ms. Swift did just that. She worked with the audience and said the fans in Tokyo were the most stylish. As she stared at the dome, she told them that she had said to herself the word “kawaii,” Japanese for cute.

As Ms. Swift launched into “Cruel Summer” from her 2019 album “Lover,” the crowd jumped to their feet, causing the stands to shake. There is no word yet on whether the activity has been recorded on seismometers.

Muktita Suhartono reporting contributed.