Pronunciations of e, ee/ei, u, and uu

[Matthew]

I'm confused about the precise pronuncations of "e", "ei"/"ee", "u", and "uu". I know I should be able to listen to pronunciations to hear them, but it really helps me to be told. I'm going to lay out my current understandings, and if others could correct them it would be much appreciated.

e
"e" seems to be pronounced kind of like the "e" in "get", except when it comes at the end of words. At the end of a word, "e" is pronounced like the "a" in "may".

ei/ee
"ei"/"ee" seems to be pronounced like the "a" in "may".

u
"u" seems to be pronounced like the "u" in "put". The lips are generally in a relaxed position, although this varies depending on what syllable it's in. For instance, in "fu" it sounds more like the "oo" in "food" because of the way you have to position your lips to say "fu".

uu
"uu" sounds like the "oo" in "food". It's not quite the same as the English "oo" in which the lips are rounded and protruded. Instead, the lips are more pursed.

Please comment on these observations and whether they're correct or not. Also, if you know of a good guide to pronunciation, I'd be interested to know what it is.

Thanks very much.

Added Note: I understand that the "double" syllables are supposed to be twice as long.

[Psy]

The pronunciation of vowels in Japanese is really straightfoward. As a rule the vowel sounds never change regardless of where they appear in a word.

a: as in "father"
i: as in "meet"
u: as in "moon"
e: as in "hay"
o: as in "bow"

In some instances, the sounds of I and U are dropped, such as in desu or ashita. There are two spelling exceptions to be aware of, though:

ou = a long o sound, not an o-u sound
ei = a long e sound, not an e-i sound.

The trick with "fu" is that the consonant falls between an F and an H. That's about it, really.

[Belton]

In some instances, the sounds of I and U are dropped, such as in desu or ashita.

The written explanation I have is that u and i are devoiced or weakened when they occur between the voiceless consonants of k,s,t,p, and h or in desu or masu at the end of a sentence.
kutsu (shoe) for instance

Although I mostly rely on hearing examples to get pronunciation correct, especially when I was starting out. But that said except for pitch accent (lets not go there again!) if you can read it you can say it. No weird stuff like in English. Of all the things that can be difficult about Japanese the pronunciaion is beautifully simple.
I remember day 1 in class going through all the sounds. a,i,u,e,o; ka,ki,ku,ke,ko;...

What's a voiced or voiceless constant you ask? (I had to)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voiced_consonant

And yeah each syllable is one beat; long vowels are two beats; not forgetting small tsu (or the double constonant in romaji) a silent beat.
Here I think is where it's much more useful to learn kana to help you with pronunciation by breaking the links to English in your mind.
The one beat per syllable is important when speaking loan words where the instinct is to pronounce them as the English equivalent which a Japanese may not recognise. You've got to keep those extra vowels in there! (In the same way that you sometimes don't recognise the Japanese pronunciation)