I am not Japanese but have spent enough years studying the Japanese language to develop some amount of literacy, so I can give some insight (but take this with

I am not Japanese but have spent enough years studying the Japanese language to develop some amount of literacy, so I can give some insight (but take this with a grain of salt, it's not my native language). I can read enough Chinese to understand the basic topic of some sentences, but Chinese grammar is completely unrelated to Japanese grammar and Chinese characters used for grammatical constructs (e.g. Chinese particles, aspect, etc.) are not really used in Japanese (or are used in totally different ways). Nouns are easiest, adjectives and verbs are sometimes sensible, but beyond that it is hard. My Chinese and Japanese friends tell me that when they have traveled to Japan or China they have used a pen and paper to communicate basic things. One challenge is that character simplification is somewhat out of sync between communist China (Taiwan and Hong Kong rejected simplification) and Japan, so sometimes a character will be hard to understand even though I know its original or differently simplified form. A final point: I can read enough Chinese characters to be amused when I see a Chinese takeout restaurant with an English name that has no relationship to its Chinese name.