aelf
Ashen One
It should help your reading but they are actually remarkably different considering the shared history. I've always heard that Chinese = easier to comprehend, harder to say and Japanese = easier to say, harder to comprehend; at least for English/Dutch speakers from a syntactical standpoint. Regardless, Japanese is a remarkably easy language, in my opinion, and that coupled with 120 million native speakers makes it worth learning.
Yeah, I'm thinking that it would help me read Kanji. But, as you can see, I've got my hands quite full right now and Japanese is not a priority. I'll do it if I can.