Biggest community is in Asia. When you visit tournaments common language for what's happening on the board is really nice to have. If you stick around that's like <0.01% of what you need to learn anyway. Plus you've learned where Atari name came from :)

Japanese counting is more popular but you really don't need to worry about it until some high dan level if you play on 19x19. It takes a long, long time before you will be able to say confidently who is winning on 19x19 if the game is close.

I suck at Chess, but to me Go was much easier to learn. You can have quite a lot of fun without studying any openings.