I'd encourage you to give some actual Scala coding a try. It can look dauntingly complex in short snippets and people often showoff complex stunts with the type system but once you actually start coding it makes a lot more sense.

You really can start by writing Java-in-Scala and then gradually making use of the more advanced features as you need them.

Clojure is great too, of course, but I think Scala is much more likely to gain a foothold in the programming mainstream.