Survival Guide for Golden Week: How to avoid the crowds & stay sane

On May 3rd last year, I stood in front of a ramen shop ten minutes before opening and watched a queue of nearly 50 people already forming. It wasn't even 10:00 AM yet. A man in a Uniqlo windbreaker was silently reading a newspaper, resigned to the wait. We never got in. That Golden Week, I fought crowds everywhere I went and came back more exhausted than when it started. This year, I want to do it smarter. So I wrote down everything I learned the hard way — maybe it saves someone else the same t