My Mandarin learning progress - Korean and Japanese language background (Korean vs Mandarin vs Japanese)

I learned Japanese for three years and during my elementary days in South Korea, I had to 

write two traditional Chinese characters (the characters used in Hong Kong and Taiwan and old Chinese days) everyday. My Japanese level is JPLT2~1. I am hoping to write JPLT1 next year. I read Japanese newspapers to improve my Japanese.

I can merely recognize about few hundreds Chinese characters.

Learning Japanese as a Korean: 

Since there are so many Kanji words  (words you can use in Chinese characters), which are common to both Korea and Japan, and Japanese and Korean language have pretty much the same grammar structure, for Koreans Japanese language is quite easy to pick up. This applies to Japanese people as well. Japanese people sure pick up Korean quite well. 

There are words common to both Korean and Japanese. I will upload them in the near future.

Learning Mandarin as a Korean:

Interestingly, the words used in China or HK or Taiwan are not less similar to the Chinese character words used in Korea and Japan. If I give an example, it's like in American English, to attend means you attend, whereas, in French, to attendre means "wait". In other words, there are words that might look similar, but have the different meanings. 

Mandarin grammar is very simple. It doesn't have many conjugations. There are not many rules in the grammar.  Although Chinese characters look scary, thanks to my rigorous drills back in elementary school, it's not really pain (in the ass). 

However, what annoys me the most is the "tone". In Mandarin, there are four tones. It means a single sound of a word  can have up to four meanings. But, I don't think it won't matter much, Since I memorize common phrases.