You must be coming from a different C++ background. I had to program in Java for a couple years after 10 years of C++/Qt and was unpleasantly surprised. Java manages to be slower and more verbose/less powerful than C++.
I went from a games programming (C++) career, to Android, to enterprise Java. I admit that enterprise Java can be pretty hideous, but I think in most cases the bloat/slowness isn't caused by the language there. As far as Android is concerned, I co-wrote and optimised a skinning animation system in Java. The bottleneck ended up being things like fill-rates and GPU calculations, not Java.
