>>1
First of all, I'm a Cantonese speaking Chinese and I've a advanced diploma in Japanese therefore I think I'm definitely qualified to give you some advice.

1. Don't listen to anyone who tells you that Chinese and Japanese are somehow related or similar to each other. They are definitely two different languages. Only some stupid Chinese people think that they can read a few Kanji and guess its meaning and pretend that they can understand Japanese.
2. Modern Chinese is definitely not dufficult to learn and speak because it has almost the most simple grammar system of all languages. Such as no singular and plural form of all nouns or sentences, only simple past tense and present comtinuous tense of all verbs, all the adjectives and adverbs can be easily indentified, no different form of subject or object pronouns, etc.. It only takes you some time to practise the reading and writing skills.
3. However, it is extremely difficult for a non-chinese person to learn how to type Chinese even though who can speak and write Chinese fluently. Besides, Chinese people prefer to speak English with foreigners rather than using their own language.
4. China is a boring country. Although this is my own opinion.

I'll talk about Japanese later.