In simple terms, pronunciation of Japanese words revolves around the vowels. As follows:

“a” – “ah” as in “father”

“i” – “ee” as in “sheep”

“u” – “oo” as in “hoot”

“e” – “eh” as in “men”

“o” – “oh” as in “rote”

Each vowel is a single syllable, so the concept of double vowels means consecutive syllables. For instance, “aa” in Japanese would be voiced twice as long as “a”, which is a single, short, sharp syllable. This is important as words are determined by syllable length. There is “kado” meaning “corner”, then there is “kaado” meaning “card”.

Three noteworthy consonant pronunciations are as follows:

The single-syllable “tsu” – this is another short, sharp syllable, with a hard “ts” sound. The main pronunciation point is that a word such as utsu will not be pronounced “oot-soo”, but rather “ooh-tsoo”. The “tsu” is standalone and occupies one full syllable, not two.

There is a “fu” which is a very soft “f” sound, and most often will sound like “hoo” with the smallest hint of that sneaky little “f” slipping between teeth and lip.

The “n” is a versatile hard consonant, and the only complete hard consonant in Japanese. Depending on the syllable that follows an “n”, the sound it represents can be a hard (English) “n” sound, or it could be an “ng”, a nasal, almost humming “n” (this one is weird, like saying the word “of” but only reaching the cusp of the “v” sound), or it could even be pronounced like an “m”. The “m” pronunciation occurs when the “n” comes before a “p”, “m”, or “b”.