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 percent through yesterday from a low in 2012. The stock gained 1.5 percent today to close at the highest since July 2009.
The Chinese-owned company has had an unlikely ally: Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. While the Abe administration has sparred with its communist counterpart over ownership of the Senkaku Islands, Japan has also been courting its neighbor¡¯s citizens by relaxing visa rules.
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