Bacon making from pork belly

I prepared 2 kg (5 lbs) of pork bacon from baraniku (バラ肉), which is the meat between the pork hide and the ribs. It is also called pork belly. Baraniku is relatively cheap in Tokyo, it costs about 1000 yen for a kg at a local supermarket (Aobakan in Jiyugaoka). I followed the recipe by Jess Pryles https://jesspryles.com/how-to-make-bacon/ basically and added some mustard seeds. Overall, it took 8 days. The process is similar to making corned beef which I did in March. The spice and salt mixture is shown below which is used to season the meat before putting it in plastic bag. After curing the meat in the refrigerator for one week, I soaked the meat in water to remove excess curing salt. I then cooked/smoked it in my Weber Pulse grill with sakura wood block for an hour at 200F, until the internal meat temperature reached 150F. The final product is shown below. The flavor was good but a little salty. Next time I would cut the salt by half and see how it tastes. In addition, I would like to try adding maple syrup instead of white sugar.  

spice and salt mixture including the pink curing salt

cut the skin off the baraniku