Nintendo 3DS, 2DS and DS

With 3ds/2ds prices still through the fucking roof, I have been looking at some Japanese models, since their price tags are slightly less crippling to look at. Unfortunately, I can't speak Japanese, and I haven't regularly used a 3ds since the release.of NSMB2, so id like to have it in English so I can navigate without googling everytime I need to get inside the settings. The issue is, this used to lock you out of a bunch of online features. My question is: with the end of online communication/gameplay, is this still something I need to worry about? I know game updates are normally gotten from the eShop, but is it possible to download the updates manually from something like hShop? What about software updates? (Do I need to install software updates at all since all they seem to do is try to break homebrew?)