Although a Java translation of a C program still looks C-ish, I agree; idiomatic Java is very different from idiomatic C. (This is not surprising; Java is intended to be "C++ done right", and idiomatic C++ is rather different from idiomatic C.)

Java is part of the C family of languages, you can draw a pretty straight line between C++ and most of Java's features (or non-features, or lacks of features).

The basic grammar and syntax are pretty much the same, as are most of the fundamental data types and their behaviors, and many other things. There are obviously a lot of differences, but if you know one language it usually isn't hard to read well-written code in the other language.

I think he means C-style syntax rather than C family of languages. Java certainly is made to read like C and C++ more than anything else even if it is very different under the hood.