Golf

For a while now I've got this notion in my head that I play golf. It all started over a year ago when my wife said I need a hobby. For some reason she doesn't considder playing Counter-Strike all of the time a hobby.  So she mentioned it to me one day and I quickly laughed it off went back to the computer. Well now I am finding that working from home gives me really flexible time and I work just a little too much.  So I figured golf would be an excellent way to get out of the house and get a little exercise in as well.

Is JAVA worth learning?

This is not flame-bait.

I am a .NET Developer (C#) of 3 years and a general web developer for 3 years prior to jumping into .NET.

Back in 2001 the company I worked for had a choice .NET or JAVA. I was a big open-source fan and felt that JAVA was the way to go. The company went with .NET.
I have always wanted to learn JAVA but never got around to it. Or when I did it had very little to do with my job that it became a distraction. I even gave JSP a shot to no avail. Silly me.

What's funny about this is every year around this time I get all self-richous and want to install Linux on my PC's and only use open source tools. It's very strange.

Anyway...
I recently moved back to the States from a 3 year development gig in the UK.
Now that I am back and stranded in Northern New England I am finding that the job market is very JAVA oriented and the .NET jobs are few. (Although the .NET market in Boston is pretty healthy but that doesn't frickin help me!)

I figured, since C# is basically a rip-off of JAVA, should I take a shot at learning?
Would a potential employer take me seriously with no real JAVA experienced?
Will JAVA die before I get a chance to become really good at it?
Is Sun killing JAVA?
Is .NET killing JAVA?