Can Japanese People Read Chinese? (Mandarin, Simplified)

>there's a bunch of stuff that kind of looks like it would make sense when reading a Chinese word in Japanese, but turns out there's a lot of meanings are very different As someone who knows nothing of the Japanese language beyond the very basics, I found these videos quite entertaining: link ▶ this video It looks like many characters are familiar to his respondents, but their combinations make absolutely no sense.

Mostly yes. Japanese people can vaguely infer the meaning of mandarin, given the simplified characters, without prior exposure to the language before: ▶ this video

That Japanese Man Yuta has a great video demonstrating just how much Chinese script do ordinary Japanese folk understand: ▶ this video

You are not the first one who has asked that question. In case you can't watch videos right now, the short answer is "you can guess, but don't expect it to be exactly correct". link ▶ this video