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 trouble. 1. Work the "Reverse Commute" — but Tokyo has changed A few years ago, the advice was simple: stay in Tokyo during Golden Week, because everyone leaves and the city gets quiet. That's still partially true. Business districts do empty out. But inbound tourism has changed the equation. The crowds that Japanese locals leave behind are now being replaced — Shibuya, Asakusa, Shinjuku fill back up with international visitors. "Tokyo is quiet during GW" is closer to myth than fact at this point.…