LBYL vs EAFP in Java?

I was recently teaching myself Python and discovered the LBYL/EAFP idioms with regards to error checking before code execution. In Python, it seems the accepted style is EAFP, and it seems to work well with the language.

LBYL (Look Before You Leap):

def safe_divide_1(x, y):
    if y == 0:
        print "Divide-by-0 attempt detected"
        return None
    else:
        return x/y

EAFP (it's Easier to Ask Forgiveness than Permission):

def safe_divide_2(x, y):
    try:
        return x/y
    except ZeroDivisionError:  
        print "Divide-by-0 attempt detected"
        return None

My question is this: I had never even heard of using EAFP as the primary data validation construct, coming from a Java and C++ background. Is EAFP something that is wise to use in Java? Or is there too much overhead from exceptions? I know that there is only overhead when an exception is actually thrown, so I'm unsure as to why the simpler method of EAFP is not used. Is it just preference?

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