Japanese is deeply influenced by Chinese, but in essence, it’s completely different from Chinese.
Although Japanese uses a large number of Chinese characters, its overall system is based on kana.
Each Chinese character carries a specific meaning, and when combined, the overall meaning still relates closely to the individual characters. In contrast, individual kana in Japanese have no meaning on their own.
The grammatical structure of Japanese is also entirely different from that of Chinese.
In short, for me, Japanese is just way too difficult — hahaha!