Vowel Pronunciation: a o

So I have this lonely planet phrasebook and it has some guidelines that seemed to conflict with what I was told by someone who had lived in Japan for a year.

The book said with an: a you pronounce like uh sound in run.

So Kamata station would sound like Kuhmuhtuh not a long drawn out uh but a quick one is how I'm imagining it.

My friend said it would be more of a short ah sound like Kahmahtah,

For an ah sound like father the book uses an a with a stress over it but I don't see that very often .

Hanasemas... does it sound like hunuhsemus or hahnahsemahs

Is this a regional thing? I'm going to be spending most of my time in Aomori prefecture and especially Hokkaido, if that matters.

The second question was about o long o and ou.

The book says the symbol o is pronounced like the o in pot.

Then a stressed o is pronounced like the aw in paw. However, one person told me the stressed o was pronounced like: ou and another like you hold the o sound slightly longer. So like passport sounds like paspohohto.

Any clarification anyone could provide? It seems like 90% of people who go to Japan never go north of Tokyo. I'm surprised at how at the variety of conflicting things I've heard.

Thanks

You friends are correct, and I'd suggest looking elsewhere for a phrasebook.

Looking at online reviews, the lonely planet japanese phrasebook pronunciation guide appears to be notorious for its inaccuracy, with most reviews pointing to the same pronunciation mistakes that you did.

You are overthinking this. When you are there you will naturally imitate others.

I'm sure there are plenty of "learn Japanese pronunciation" videos on YouTube, maybe you can try checking that to get the pronunciation right.
It's very hard to get it right from just reading, imo, you need to hear it...

Ignore all the explanations such as o is like in English pot etc. Just listen and mimick the actual pronunciation of native speakers

If you cannot find where to listen to the sounds (highly unlikely), and if you know good Spanish, the vowels are very close in pronunciation.

"another like you hold the o sound slightly longer"
this is an almost correct description, though it's not "slightly" longer, it has a double length, the same for other vowels. There is no such thing as "stressed vowel" in Japanese, only "long vowel" exists.

long vowels in Japanse:
https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Japanese/Pronunciation#Long_vowels