What are the maximum levels for the village shops

BP is your number of Brave Points. The number of BP you have influences your performance in battle. For me, it maxes out at 3 BP.

Certain actions naturally consume BP, and others are fueled by it explicitly (like Valkyrie Acrobatics, for instance). Some accessories and skills allow you do more damage and take less with a higher BP. Having a negative BP makes you more vulnerable in any situation.

The Brave menu command spends 1 BP to give you an extra move in battle. The Default command has you defend and you get +1 BP at the end of the turn.

If you start a turn with negative BP, you can't act. Negative BP is automatically incremented at the start of each turn.

Reactive abilities like Counter are not inhibited by negative BP.

As far as I can tell from the demo (which may be different in the full game) it passes as long as the game is on, suspended or not. As long as Bravely Default is playing even if the 3ds IS CLOSED time will still pass. If Bravely Default is not playing time will not pass though.