alt Hacker News> 方 and 頬 (hou vs hoo) is a better example.
As a native Japanese speaker, this example is eye-opening. I hadn't even realized that the u in 方 is pronounced as /o:/ — I believe most Japanese people haven't either, despite unknowingly pronounce it that way.
Also, I have no idea how to Hepburn-romanize 方 vs 頬, 負う vs 王, and 塔 vs 遠. If I had to romanize, I would just write it as whatever the romaji input method understands correctly (hou/hoo, ou/ou, and tou/too, in this case).
Your comment is astonishing.
If you know the word 方, that it is /ho:/, and you know that it has a う in it when written out, how can you not know that う stands for making the o long? The only vowel is the long o.
Japanese kindergarten kids can recognize hiragana words with "おう", correctly identifying it as /o:/. By the time they learn the 方 kanji they would have seen it written in hiragana upmpteen times, like AよりBのほうがいい and whatnot.