There are subtle differences in features that most Western cultures could not pick out. To you they might not look any different but to the Japanese and Chinese they do.

Japanese are NOT Chinese! Japanese learned from China around one thousand years ago when China was the most advanced country in the world that Japan can reach. China fell shortly after that, since its intellectuals suggesting binding women's feet. Half population became handicaped, simply because Chinese males want to turn their women into sex slaves. Later Japan learned from other more advanced countries. Eventually Japan become the most powerful nation in far east and evaded China in 1935. Every three Japanese soldiers could force hundreds of Chinese people to jump into huge graveyard. The Chinese did not even think of fighting back (hundreds to only three) because they were slaved/oppressed by their rulers for thousand years! The character of the Japanese is exactly opposite to the Chinese. Japanese values accuracy, punctuation, perfection, self-control, constant improvement, country comes first. Chinese want peace, food and drink, sex, look good feel good, family means all. These are totally different nations, make no mistakes!

Mitochondrial DNA shows us that the Japanese and the Chinese are two completely different races that have ended up in the same area: http://www.utexas.edu/features/2007/ancestry/graphics/ancestry5_medium.jpg shows the Japanese settling around 50,000 years ago and the Chinese settling 35,000 years ago. They look similar because that what happens when you live in the same area - a person from Lithuania and a person from Scotland will both develop a New Yorker's accent if they moved there. Same goes for physiological adaptations to the region over many generations.

I think the often-stated: "Japanese look like Chinese" is nothing more than a myth. People acquainted with both countries or cultures would immediately notice that they are two different races. By Chinese, I mean Han Chinese here. Probably the only "Chinese" groups that do have resemblance to the Japanese in terms of features, would probably be the Turkic-Mongolian- Manchurian groups who are recognized as Ethnic Minorities in People's Republic of China who are after all, members of the Ural-Altaic Language of which Japanese and Korean are thought to be likely members of anyway. Put it this way, one would readily notice the physical or facial-features similarity of a Uighur person with a Japanese person,than one would with a Chinese. Yes- the Japanese did borrow a lot from China in terms of culture and one of the most visible and enduring aspect of this borrowing would have to be the Chinese Characters KANJI (HANZI as it is pronounced in Mandarin).BUT that doesn't make the Japanese racially Chinese. The modern Turkish and Malay-Indonesian languages are written in the Latin/ Roman script but that does not make these languages Indo-European.