Note that the Chinese and Japanese systems of the animals/earthly stems/whatever your local equivalent is differ in some places.

A glorious collection.

Paracite said:

Note that the Chinese and Japanese systems of the animals/earthly stems/whatever your local equivalent is differ in some places.

They both have the same animals in the same order. Not that surprising because the Japanese 干支 is derived from the Chinese Zodiac （十二生肖） and the traditional Chinese time measurement unit Shi Chen（时辰）.
Here is the story in case if anyone's interested.

OMGkillitwithfire said:

They both have the same animals in the same order.

Not exactly the same; it's sheep instead of goat, and wild boar instead of pig.

And it cycles on Jan 1 in Japan, rather than whenever the Chinese New Year was that year.

I believe that other counties has similar differences. It's nothing major, but it's not a carbon-copy either.

It's still the same date, relative to the calendar's New Year.
And didn't the Japanese also use Chinese calendar before Emperor decided they should use European calendar to join the future ?

Seika said:

It's still the same date, relative to the calendar's New Year.
And didn't the Japanese also use Chinese calendar before Emperor decided they should use European calendar to join the future ?

Well, they used various version of the Chinese one (initially coming via Korea), until they made their own indigenous, apparently more accurate calendar in the 17th century (it was off by a couple days at that point). The printed calendars for these ranged from ones that just told you which months were long and short (and only that) to much more complicated ones for administrative and religious use. The long/short ones got pretty artistic too, since the information density was so low that you could be quite creative with the presentation.

The Meiji administration did switch over to the Western calendar, though.

Could someone explain some of the choices?

Tatsuta isn't the "tatsu", but the snake, and wears an outfit themed around Egypt, for example, even though I don't remember anything like that having to do with her character. Same goes for Amatsukaze, Mutsu, Hyuuga, and Kongou.