Lambdas are what make operations on data structures convenient in Scala and Clojure, not saving a few characters on the handful of literals in your code.
java's main principle: preserving backwards compatibility. this is why the iterations are so small and take so long. java tip: don't look at other languages or you'll get depressed at how easy things could be or even should be
For me, one of the big wins of both Clojure and Scala is being able to handle maps, sequences, etc. conveniently.