@carolgreen986,

Pick Japanese! Go with Japanese! Make it Japanese!

It's just that simple.

I say that having studied both and ulitimately picked Chinese. The reason I say this is because Japanese culture and society are much more attractive to foreigners. Japan is clean, high-tech, modern and westernized, yet has the mistique of the orient and a connection to ancient Chinese culture to give it a twinge of ancient highly hierarchical structure and old-world feel to keep you motivated in your study.

Besides that, the fact that there are no tones in Japanese to condend with and you can be completely literate with only 2,500 Kanji characters under your belt, (as opposed to 5,000+ Hanzi necessary for Chinese) and with the Hirigana and Katakana phonetic characters as well as grammar that's similar to western languages (prefixes, suffixes, tenses, conjugations, and the like), you don't need as deep a commitment of time as you need with Chinese.

John Pasden mentioned in his blog that, the pronunciation of Chinese is difficult at first, but grammar is much easier and Chinese gets easier with time, whereas Japanese is simpler at first but because of grammar it gets more complicated over the long-haul. However I don't agree with this notion.

Chinese has been plenty difficult over the long-haul. And never seems to get easier. (Idioms, Written vs. Spoken language, Casual vs. Formal language, Writing, Tones, Tone Sandhi, Characters with multiple readings, sheer amount of vocab necessary for fluency, etc.)

Japanese grammar has so many parallels to English that it's much easier to wrap your head around than the lack of grammar in Chinese. In Chinese grammar, so much is inferred and implied that it often leaves too many questions in the western mind for ust to understand completely. That compounded with the fact that Characters can be absolutely beastly especially when combined to create new words, it just takes a monumental commitment of time and energy to master it all.

Japanese has a coolness factor that Chinese doesn't have.

Again, Chinese is the language that I picked because it's right for me, but for any beginner who's just looking to try their hand at learning an Asian language I have to say, go with Japanese, you'll be better off.