Alligator Descartes wrote an article called Java and Perl Harnessed (JAPH for short :o)).

Apparently he has been working (sucessfully) on a model to embed perl into java. The article was presented to LW back in 1997's perl conf, so I don't know what evolved since then. It may be just theoretics, but I suppose this may also be what you are looking for.

Since I am also java-dumb, I can only recommend on the basis that I found something, but not necessarily that I know what it means, or how to use it. HTH!

BTW: Check out the guy's bio for fun, he looks like a mean mutha!