A certain Otter got me to join in not too long ago, and I found it very much worth it to get him to help me start out by giving me someone to interact with right off the bat. I'd say pick a single place to worry about: if you want to start in Ta-Wahi, figure out what's up there and only there. Don't worry about the other places. Besides where Saeren (my medic character) is (Ta-Wahi) I tend to only check up on Kentoku and sometimes Kini-Nui. Over Skype I helped with something that happened in Po-Wahi so I looked at that, but I only really keep up with what's going on in Ta-Koro.

Speaking of what's going on... because I still kinda have no clue what I'm doing in the RPG I chose to make a medic because medic-ing is something I know (and something I actually do). You may be more confident making a character utterly different from you, or you may want to create a character with at least some kind of skill or quirk you are familiar with so that you can ease in.

Btw, expect players to sometimes not right back: my character is currently stuck waiting for someone to say their name. How do bzprpg? with patience, and (at least initially) with a certain amount of specificity.

Some important current events: Ta-Wahi just got done with being attacked by the Piraka; the Piraka have made it into the mysterious Vault (i dunno wat tat's all 'bout); the Dasaka of Kentoku are sending a submarine to Mata Nui, the Dasaka Empress having recently been assassinated; and someone in Po-Wahi set off a tear gas grenade in a bar to see if it would work.

If you're interested in Ta-Wahi, I'd be willing to give you someone to set your character down beside. The newbs must stand together! Do note I'm still figuring this out so I'd probably not be the best mentor

Zox hit the major points, I'd say! Having someone to start off with is usually a great help, since it lets you hit the ground running with your character instead of having to seek out interaction.  And while there's certainly people with half a dozen-plus characters with plots running in every Koro, in my experience it's much better to start small with one character and focus on a single area.

If you're looking for a good overview of the story so far, Nuju Metru's put one up in the Starter Topic (which I'm guessing you've already seen), and Zox just laid out current events pretty well.  Hopefully in the near future said starter topic will be updated with a more comprehensive guide and advice as well, but for now I'd say just jump in and don't worry about waiting for that.

I've also got a fairly new character puttering about Ta-Wahi - given the Piraka just smashed parts of the town up pretty badly, it seems to be the hot place to be at the moment (sorry), so you might want to start there.  Otherwise, I recommend just coming up with a character you like, figuring out where you'd like to put them, and reaching out to people to ask if anyone'd like to create a new character to go along with yours or to see if anyone's got an inactive character in the area they'd like to start using again.  (The News and Discussion topic sometimes works for this - otherwise blogs or PMing always work too.)

Start BZPRPG. Stop BZRPG. 

Rinse and repeat.

Zox and GSR have given you everything you need, I think. I know I jumped in when I knew practically nothing, and still had a lot of fun! The BZPRPG can be overwhelming at first, so I'd definitely second the advice to start small, with one character and one area.

If you need any help, feel free to shoot me a PM.