“Thousand-dollar rice cookers and toilet seats that know when you enter the room. That’s what visitors to Japan from China have been buying at Laox Co., sending the Tokyo-based duty-free store chain to its first profit in 14 years and its shares up 1,400 per cent from a low in 2012. The stock gained 2.1 per cent today as it headed for a five-year high. The Chinese-owned company has had an unlikely ally: Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.”