What Twist said, except substitute "work" for "school". I'd seen a preview which so impressed me (there was also something mystically attractive about the name "Shenmue" as well - I immediately and for the next two years pronounced it "Shen-moo-ay") that I immediately pre-ordered it for delivery from Amazon. Then in the week of release, I saw some bad (or rather, a little bit disappointed) reviews that mentioned the game's linearity of main storyline. So I nearly cancelled, but in fact it arrived a day early or something, and I thought, "What the hell, let's give it a go." And about 3am realtime I finally stopped and went to bed.
Incidentally, it was 6pm shentime on the first day before I even got out of the house - I went round examining absolutely everything - every drawer, every door. Then I went out of the house and it was night time, I never saw daylight on my first ever day in Shenmue!