I'd much rather use Ruby (with Rails) than Java, and for future learning, I'm interested in Scala. Obviously, the JVM figures heavily into all this, though that isn't the same thing as Java.

But still, GWT, Guice and Grails are pretty active and relevant projects. Even if you don't plan to use them (I don't), it's pretty hard to see a language as "dead" when the community still draws this level of talent and innovation.