this is bbc news. the headlines: the former israeli prime minister benjamin netanyahu could be returning to power according to exit polls after tuesday's election. the polls give mr netanyahu's right—wing bloc a slim majority of seats. it would be a dramatic comeback for mr netanyahu who was ousted last year after 12 years in office. jair bolsonaro has finally broken his silence following his defeat in sunday's presidential election in brazil. he didn't mentioned his rival, luis inacio lula da silva, who won the vote by a narrow margin and stopped short of conceding but said he would respect the constitution. with the world cup in qatar just a month away, former and current iranian athletes have asked football's

governing body fifa to ban their national team. they say it follows the violent crackdown against protesters. the group is made up of athletes inside and outside of iran. now on bbc news, the travel show. mind blowing. look at this. incredible! i have been to japan several times but never to explore expect the unexpected. the extroverts.

japan. but 500 kilometres south of tokyo is the kansai region they call the heart of japan. and a city with a very different history and personality: osaka. korea and china, especially. and it was run and still is by

businessmen and merchants. and it is those generations of wealthy traders who have shaped the city, creating its own unique culture. it has become a centre for food and developed as a home it is frantic behind there. in particular, humour became osaka's speciality. flourishing into a multimillion—dollar business. it is about nine o'clock in the morning and look at this. this is the hottest ticket in town. osaka is japan's mecca of comedy. these guys are really famous here. this theatre claims to be the busiest and most popular comedy venue in all ofjapan. the demand is phenomenal, it is open 365 days a year to full houses of up to four shows a day. that is around one

million people a year. thanks to constant tv exposure, comics are huge celebrities. fans travel from all over the country to see the stars live on stage. why are you here? the show includes many types of comedy but one of the most common and popular is manzai. a double act with a straight man and a funny guy trading jokes and it is this style that emerged in osaka. this is now the third act

that we have seen and each one is going down a storm. laughter. i wanted to find out more about the roots of comedy in this city. hello! kaishi—san! nice to meet you! katsura kaishi practices the traditional form of comic story telling, rakugo, and he says osaka's love of entertainment and culture evolved from its trading history. speaks japanese. so there is a very special sense of humour here in osaka. 0k. kaishi has learned to perform in english as well as japanese in order to share his art with the world.

i'll go to your show tomorrow, we'll see, we'll find out. rakugo comedy was invented by buddhist monks to make their teachings more entertaining. speaking english: there was a car accident, - and the family — father, mother, and their children were all hospitalised. but their pet, a monkey, was the only one left with the police. the police officer said i wish this monkey could talk! it's a storytelling tradition that obviously resembles stand—up comedy, but this is some 200 years older.

what was the father doing? monkey sound. he was drinking, maybe he was drinking and driving. what were you doing, monkey? monkey sound. after the show, i wanted to get some tips from the expert. hold the pen? "monkey, what was the father doing?" "hang on a minute, what were you doing, monkey?" and that's it? they laugh. you should maybe move to japan and should be a professional rakugo performer. really? laughter.

time now to leave osaka and head 30km south to a satellite city, kishiwada, home to japan's most famous and dangerous festival. i am about to witness something really quite special, one of japan's wildest annual festivals. and it is rehearsal time for a jamboree that has been going on for 300 years. it began when local craftsmen would show off their wares to the lord of the castle. today, the tradition continues with teams, still all—male, from individual neighbourhoods, competing in a procession around the city. this year marks the debut of a brand—new float,

or danjiri, and p0 is the proud master craftsman. are you excited? maybe i could help, could i help with your rehearsal? maybe. before anything can happen, there is an official blessing where they pray for safety. they are making an offering to the god for a wish for a happy and safe festival. i am now a member of a very special group. even though this is a dress rehearsal it is deadly serious. deadly serious.

it may not technically be a race but pride dictates but the tradition continues. wow!

it is crazy. after three hours of rehearsal, the teams take a breather. were there any dangerous moments, any times when you were a bit worried? do you have the energy to do two more days, long days? so ijoined the hundreds of thousands of spectators for the real thing. the biggest event of the year. right now we have the perfect vantage point and they are

about to do what is called yaremasu, the really dangerous corner turn. we are now doing what surprisingly few visitors to japan do, which is to leave behind the main island of honshu and head out to explore one of the thousands of others. my next destination is japan's fourth biggest island,

shikoku, where roads become narrow and winding and you are surrounded by dense forests of cedar trees. the views from up here are simply stunning. we're now in the mountains on the western side of the island. the iya valley — in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, these remote highlands were a perfect hideaway — literally. right, i'm now going to relive a bit of ancient japanese history. we're really inland and remote here up in the mountains, and this is where disgraced or defeated warriors would escape to. so this is the legendary

kazurabashi bridge, apparently about a thousand years old, made of vine and wisteria — here we go, it's supposed to be really dodgy to cross. but hey, if warriors did it before, so can i. the plan would be you'd get across this bridge and then cut the vines so that the enemy couldn't catch you. mind you, getting across the bridge in the first place is hard enough. the gap between these planks of wood here is, i'd say, large enough to have your foot go through. look at that, they are sprinting across here. you're doing very well. sensible, but i think the real

samurai way is to walk across through the middle, so i'm going to do that. 15 metres up and 150 feet across, this bridge is today reinforced with steel girders and rebuilt every two or three years. yes! what a samurai can do, ican do. so i'm now walking into a village, nagoro, which on the face of it, it's like many other rural villages injapan, nagoro is going through

the same process as thousands of other villages here — a low birthrate and an exodus from the countryside to the big city, leaving an alarming number of new ghost towns. but one lady who returned to her home village to look after her elderly father was dismayed by this trend, and vowed to try and repopulate the village...after a fashion. konnichiwa! ayu na—san? speaks japanese. rajan — nice to meet you, and yourfriends.

now it's become a cottage industry. using old newspapers and clothes donated by fellow villagers and well—wishers, ayano has created her own scarecrow community. we will call it hiro! it takes two days to prepare and make each scarecrow, and now, there are 350 of these mannequins — way outnumbering the ten villagers left here. some people may find this scene rather spooky, but for ayano, it's brought unexpected celebrity. tourists arrive in regular numbers from all over the world, and there's an annual scarecrow festival. now it's time to take the new boy to find some friends. i think i'm more attached to these scarecrows than ayano—san is, frankly. wow. this is amazing! astonishing.

ayano used to attend this school, as did most other locals. but two years ago it closed down. so she's preserved it for posterity — frozen it in time from its last ever day.

from a community on the verge of extinction to one forever on the edge of danger. my next destination takes me 600 kilometres south to japan's third—largest island and the city of kagoshima, in the shadow of the country's most volatile mountain, sakurajima. japan is home to 108 active volcanoes, more than almost any other country. beneath us, three peaks of the volcano and two craters. there are three eruptions a day on average from sakurajima, and today, it's happily gurgling sulphuric gases, making the air pungent. 100 years ago there was a massive eruption from this volcano, which basicallyjoined it

to the main island. it used to be a separate island. in fact, all the time, new islands are being created acrossjapan because of volcanic activity. 5,000 people live in this area, their daily lives constantly affected basically by what this volcano does. so, what is it like actually living down there? only a couple of months before our visit, 77 people here were evacuated. akira ohmura is a local tour guide who has lived here for six years, and he says he loves the energy of the place. first stop, an unusual beach where the sand isn't really sand, but lava ash.

tourists who he meets are always surprised that the volcano erupts so frequently, and that people actually live here — but that's because they are so well prepared. the monitoring equipment here is some of the best in the world, and locals take the danger in their stride. mayumi ohyama was recently forced to evacuate from her beloved hometown.

but in spite of the constant threat of upheaval, she wouldn't live anywhere else. and there are some fringe benefits from living in a volcanic zone. south of kagoshima lies ibusuki, a unique hot spring resort. basically i am about to be slow baked in a sand oven of 50 celsius. for therapeutic reasons, i am assured. it's hot, i'm sweating underneath here. and it is a very strange experience, but i think the thing

is to just relax into it, i guess. so at the end of my all—too—brief time injapan, i am struck by the sheer diversity of the country in terms of culture, landscape and people. yeah, you are smart! you're good! laughs as soon as i got off the regular tourist trail, i encountered quirky, humorous, adaptable individuals who love to live life to the max. and, ultimately, i am left with a deep sense of serenity and tradition that is, i would venture to say, uniquelyjapanese. that was. ..unlike anything.

hello. well, the met office have confirmed that it was another very warm month across the country, and october in england was the fourth—warmest october on record. but quite alarmingly, we're now seeing some of the warmest conditions on record, taking the year as a whole to day. as for rainfall, well, we needed the rain, but it's only northern ireland which was significantly above average. but for the first few days of november, our rainfall accumulation chart shows that all of us will see some pretty wet weather. the darker colours in the south show some welcome rain to come here. but it's notjust wet, some windy weather, and especially during the next 2a hours. widespread gales across the country, and in this hatched area, we could see potentially damaging and disruptive gusts of wind of 50—70 mph, all tied in with this approaching and deepening area

of low pressure. now, before it arrives, a little ridge there which indicates a quiet end to the night. a few mist and fog patches, a lot of dry weather, just a few showers in the south and the west, but a rather chilly start compared to what we've been used to — 2—3 celsius in some sheltered glens in scotland. lots of sunshine, though, through scotland, england, wales to begin with. northern ireland cloudy, already turning windy, increasingly wet through the morning, some heavy rain at times sliding into western scotland and through the afternoon to wales and western parts of england. much of eastern england, though, will stay dry until later in the day, with some sunny spells. temperatures here around 15—16 celsius in the southeast, but it will feel cooler than that in the north and the west as those winds pick up. in fact, it's going to get windier as the day goes through. just an example of some of the gusts by mid—afternoon, 40—50, close to 60 mph, maybe a little bit more as we head into the evening. heavy rain sweeping across all of england. strongest winds overnight to take us into thursday across central and northern parts of scotland. winds easing a little bit later. and the clearer skies that some will see to the north and west into thursday morning, again down into single figure temperatures. milder in the southeast.

and this is where the big question mark for thursday will be. the weather front may just drag its heels, bringing bursts of rain northwards and eastwards as we go through thursday, east anglia, the southeast, and the channel islands. away from that, though, more likely to see sunny spells develop, a scattering of showers, some of those heavy towards the south and west, and the temperatures 10—13 celsius. feeling cool compared to what we've been used to, but that's where we should be for this stage in november and the sort of temperatures we'll see through friday and into the weekend. friday, the driest day of the week most widely. saturday, of course, bonfire night, rain will be pushing its way in and some strong winds, too. bye for now.

this is bbc news. iam lucy i am lucy grey. our top stories: jumping forjoy — israel's religious right is projected to make major election gains and former prime minister benjamin netanyahu is tipped to win a record sixth term. brazil's president, jair bolsonaro, authorises officials to begin the transfer of power following his narrow defeat in sunday's election. elon musk�*s shake—up of twitter goes on. if you want the coveted blue tick, you'll have to pay for it. and why iranian athletes are demanding their own football team be banned from the world cup.