Usually, we don't use 敬語 when describing our family members and their actions. So, 「ラスベガスのご出身です」should be 「ラスベガス出身です」, and 「弟さん」「弟」.

「メキシコ料理でレストランに」は、「メキシコ料理のレストランで」にすればＯＫです。Prepositions are often hard to translate. "On Monday" can be 「月曜日に」、「月曜日は」、「月曜日には」.

｢千と千尋の神隠し｣はどうでしたか？
私は下のむすこと見に行きました。
色づかいがとてもきれいだったとおもいます。
英語のタイトルがspirited awayだということをはじめてしりました。

By the way, 「私の弟はラスベガス出身です」sounds a bit strange to me, because I guess usually the siblings are from the same place. Meanwhile, I know the translation of "He is from Las Vegas" into Japanese should be "彼はラスベガス出身です".

｢出身(地)」 is usually a place where you were born or where you lived in your childhood.

I'm sorry that I cannot give you a good explanation about this.

Both of your comments were problems I mulled over; so, it's good to hear your opinions.

I guessed that I ought not use honorifics with my own relatives. It's hard to figure this kind of stuff out from dictionaries.

As for the use of 出身, I tried it because we just learned it in class. In my family, it's a bit difficult to say where we're from because my Dad was in the Air Force. We were all born in different places and we moved around a lot. For example, my Mom's from New Mexico; my Dad's from Illinois; my older brother was born in New Mexico; my two younger brothers and I were born in California; and my four younger sisters were born in 1) the Philippines, 2) Louisianna, 3) Okinawa, and 4) Nevada.

None of us children lived in our birthplaces more than a year or two. However, my Dad retired in Las Vegas and most of my family lives there now. I don't think of Las Vegas as "home", but I think they do.

I intend to write more about "Spirited Away" on nipponDAZE. We all enjoyed it. (This was my second time to see it.)

I was very happy that when my brother asked me why the witch didn't take all the characters from Chihiro's name, that I could explain that she left the character for "chi" which is also pronounced "sen".

But there are so many other strange and wonderful things to research. For instance, why do the flags at the bath house say "oil". Is it a pig-rendering plant? (Nausicaa.net explains the name of the bath house is abura-ya, but why?)

And why is the witch named "Baaba". Is the Japanese word for crone (hag/witch) related to the Russian "Baba-Yaga" (who lives deep in the forest in a little hut on hen's feet)?

Yeah -- actually, I had been thinking about some of the same things...

In Japan when you have an onsen or bath, you often see the character ｢湯｣, which indicates hot water as in ｢お湯｣. If you look at the character they used in the movie, ｢油｣, you see that the hen (left side) is the same, the hen for water, and the right side in both cases is the phonetic component, indicating the pronunciation "yu". But in the second one, you can also notice that the meaning of the right side is "cause/origin/sprout" because originally it was a pictograph of something sprouting out the top there... So I figured maybe this was just a stylistic thing -- that the creator liked that character more for a hot spring because of the sprouting connotation, even though it's not used to mean hot water now. I could be way off, but it's just my feeling. Maybe it also has something to do with creating an other-worldly feeling...

As for the witch, her name was "Yubaaba", as in ｢湯婆｣（ゆばば）,"old woman of the hot spring", except with the first 'ba' made longer... Kamajii, the fire stoker, is basically from ｢窯爺｣, or the "old man of the furnace"...

Hi, M-san.

The name of the bath house is Abura-ya, which is「油屋」in kanji. That's why the flags have the character「油」. I think Abura-ya is just the proper name for the bath house, and has nothing to do with "oil", although 「油」literally means "oil". If you search for「油屋」at Yahoo! Japan, you can find several bath houses named「油屋」.

Yu-Baaba is written「湯婆婆」in my book. Its furigana is「ゆばーば」. 「婆」can be read both「ばあ」and「ば」. So it should be written「ゆばあば」but「ゆばーば」looks more fantastic and fairy tale-like.

Some of my children's friends prefer to call their grandmothers "baaba" instead of "obaachan", and it sounds cute and friendly. "Yubaaba" may have been named after such nicknames.