are all the stories just an exaggeration

Imagine a densely populated country where most employees get quite limited amounts of annual leave, where suddenly everyone has a continuous stretch of several days off...

pre-covid golden week

If you are worried about pent-up demand for international travel the big x-factor is mainland china, who are in the process of relaxing restrictions as we speak. If they open outbound tourism before then...They were the largest source of international visitation to Japan pre-COVID, have not been able to travel internationally for three years, and have their own GW on May 1-7.

westerners

not sure why this focus since the largest volume of international tourists to Japan are from Asian countries all of which have reopened (except mainland china).

see my girlfriend for her birthday

this is going into /r/relationships territory and not /r/japantravel lol