I was reading through a Japanese art book, and in one interview the artist said he liked using pencil to outline characters instead of inking. He said that it was easier for corrections and experimentation. I've also noticed that the thin line looks nicer than my pen's line, which bleeds a bit.

Any opinions on this method?

i'm assuming it was for color works and one with a more painterly style? (give the artist's name please)

it works but I dont think it works for more clean cut coloring like cell shading or for stand alone BW work

Sounds a bit like Mark Crilley.
He has a ton of videos on youtube. Not positive if that's him, but you may want to search and see it.

But it all really depends on what your most comfortable with, so if your pen bleeds, I suggest either trying to use it to your advantage (which is actually possible), or try out new pens.

Using pencils to "ink" a comic isn't necessarily the right way to go. As it could smudge, and it could become very messy.
However, if you practice it, and you're up to it, by all means, do it up.

Using a pencil to 'ink' is a perfectly acceptable method, although it takes a lot of skill to do well. If you don't do it well you'll end up uploading finished pages that look like sketches. (cough cough megatokio cough cough cough)

Middle part of Din Krakatau was "inked" in pencil. I returned to normal inking at the end as the pencil lead I was using was a little bit lighter (so much for buying cheap supermarket non-brands, haha) and... there's not that much of a difference to be honest.

You just have to make sure your pencils are dark, strong and clean and it'll work fine... (or you could be like me and don't care about "dirt" on the scanned artwork, heh, but I don't think that works at all when the book is supposed to be b&w).

Some examples:
textured/dirty coloring
flat coloring
more "splotchy" coloring

All three pages from raw pencils.

If your ink is bleeding, try some different paper.

If you're coloring, inking with pencil would probably work, but it doesn't usually work for standalone black and white without shading, it loses the hardness of ink lines, usually. Now, I don't ink, but my colors stand alone.

Ultimately, I think it's best to just explore and see what styles suit you best, and what you enjoy doing best. If that's pencil lineart, go for it!