beboots

I think it's because people want to start off with Naruto making a different first impression on his teammates and Kakashi. Personally, I think it'd be cool if he time-traveled to say, his fight with Neji in the chuunin exams. Or Sakura time-traveling to the time where she's watching over the other two and defending them by herself from the Oto genin in the Forest of Death. :D Precisely, I like how your Naruto doesn't know the exact date--often times the time-traveler just looks at the calendar and is like, "Oh, it's the day of my graduation, what do you know?" and runs off without getting hit with that emotional impact of oh-my-god-it's-the-past. You don't have to do so much of the emotional impact though, since Naruto and Gaara planned to go back and knew full well that they would be in the past. Plus, it's going from a relatively peaceful time to another peaceful time, so the environment change isn't so drastic. :)