“But when I do..”

Question

私のお国にコンビニがある。 でも、めったに買い物に行かない。 すると、たったの要点しかが買い物に行く。

I’m struggling with a couple of things trying to say: “My country has convenience stores. But, I rarely visit them. And when I do, I only go to buy essentials.”

• すると is not strong enough. I basically want to say “but when I do, ...” and I’m not sure how to link this. Throwing in another でも in there just seems like weak language usage

• Struggling heavily with たったの要点しかが買い物に行く. I basically want to convert “only the essentials” to a modifier of going shopping. I’m over my head a little, but this is how I learn.

Thanks for any pointers, this is not easy to find in my grammar books.

Answer 1

すると、たったの要点しかが買い物に行く。

• すると means "(and) then", and it makes no sense in this context. You have to say 行く場合でも, 行くにしても, 行くとしても, etc. (See this). Note that godan and ichidan verbs cannot be replaced by a pro-verb, so you have to repeat 行く.

• 要点 means essentials in the sense of "key points / gist (of a document)". You have to say 必需品 or 最低限必要なもの instead. Besides, you have marked 要点 with が, the subject marker. It's you who goes shopping, not essentials.

• Your use of たったの is wrong. たった is used to describe how much smaller some quantity is than expected.

• You have to review the usage of しか. It's a negative polarity item that must be always followed by some form of negation such as ない. You don't usually have to say 買い物に many times because the purpose of going to convenience stores is self-evident.

• お国 is a honorific word, so you should not use it to refer to your own home country. Also, you probably want to use も ("also") in the first sentence.

The corrected version is:

私の国にもコンビニがある。でも、めったに行かない。行くとしても、必需品しか買わない。 (or 最低限必要なものを買う時にしか行かない)