Chinese
I speak japanese, and some chinese.
Some words are almost the same thing, like "denwa" (jp), in chinese you say "dian hua". "ai" means love in both languages. But still, there are only words that are similar between both languages. Grammar is a TOTALLY DIFFERENT thing. It has NOTHING to do.... actually chinese grammar is way easier than japanese.
Pronunciation is very different too. Nothing to do. So i would say japanese and chinese only share the writting system and some words (a lot of those words were created by japanese with the chinese writting system, and chinese people use them now).
Plus, chinese is a tonal language. Japanese... is not.
oh, another thing they have in common are counters. like "ippon, ni hon, san
bon, etc..." but i guess chinese has more of those.
I am not a linguist (yet), but i hope this helps.