Trying to import one language's metaphors and idioms into another is only going to impede your progress.

If this were strictly true Perl would not exist. It is commonly recognized that the strength our beloved language is that it freely borrows from other languages those idioms, constructs, methodologies that have proved effective and expressive.

You are correct in saying that often people new to Perl attempt to write in the form of their favorite language -- I did this in moving from Java to Perl -- and thereby risk severely limiting their command of Perl. However, the importation of powerful idioms such as map, grep, foreach, et al, in no way restricts the expressiveness of Java. Quite the contrary, they have the chance to cut through the verbosity and rigidity of standard Java, thereby making the language more usable.