yes, the character is easier to move than the whole world including all the other sprites and objects in it... and a 'camera' is much easier in the long run, you can do what you like with the view then, like for a house you can keep the camera fixed, or prevent the camera from moving any further when the player is near the edge of the map...
but i would strongly advise against using a ScrollPane (yes, i did it myself once in my first ever game... it was a mario bros clone and it was dodgy as hell... 1.5 made it a lot better but still it is jumpy and not good...)
this is very general, but get yourself a BufferStrategy on a JPanel (or a Canvas) and draw the tiles for the background yourself... make a class that holds them all with a render(Graphics g) method to draw them...
there is a Framework for full screen or windowed JPanel with bufferStrategy in the Shared Code section...
http://www.java-gaming.org/cgi-bin/JGNetForums/YaBB.cgi?board=share;action=display;num=1036791657;start=11#11it's big, but its one class... this is probably the best way to do graphics using plain old java 2D.
or you could use the GrexEngine i think it provides the same thing...