[MMM]

I am not going to disagree with you Kyle, and in the long run what you are saying is certainly true. However the OP was talking about just starting his Japanese study.

I taught students from day 1 of their Japanese study, and as we got into kanji I found that Chinese students were surprised by 1) the meanings assigned to some characters were different then they were in Chinese and that 2) they had a hard time grasping the notion of multiple pronunciations for each character.

So in the long term, sure he has an advantage, but in the short term I do not think so as much.